This is a little OT, therefore I'll keep it quick-ish.
Capcom is pursuing 3 growth opportunities: overseas (vs. Japan), digital (vs. physical), and "catalog titles" (vs. new releases; similar to Nintendo's cultivation of evergreen titles). Their management seems to believe that by going hard on PC, they can achieve growth in all 3 areas (overseas, digital, and catalog titles).
In the Nikkei interview, Haruhiro Tsujimoto (President and COO) also argued that PC gaming are growing in the emerging markets (machine translated):
- "With people in emerging countries having smartphones, the game population is increasing at a stretch and the market is expanding. However, I'm looking beyond my smartphone."
- "In emerging countries, many people will first pick up a smartphone as a necessity in their daily lives. Consoles are also important, but I see PCs coming next."
For the reasons above, Capcom is betting on being PC first (day-and-date or late port to consoles) to grow their PC sales significantly and reach parity with the console sales (50:50). They did
not said that their console releases would decrease.
While none of the above is a bad assumption, the objective of reaching PC-console sales parity in mere 1-2 years seems extremely optimistic. For Ubisoft for example:
And EA:
Not sure why Capcom thinks that they can do better than Ubisoft and EA in boosting the PC vs. console sales ratio. When an analyst asked how Capcom will grow its PC user base, here's their reply (official transcript):
"While producing high-quality content is a given, we believe that pursuing the Media business in parallel to game software sales will be effective in further raising brand awareness with users globally. We look to expand our PC user base by working to enhance brand value through the synergetic effects of games and movies."