being risk averse and doing the same old status quo. At the end of the day, if you repeat that cycle you will get a volley of abuse from consumers because you’re not bringing anything new. The challenge is maintaining the core experience but building around that more value and point-of-interest.
Did the initial fan outcry impact the game’s development? We had an inner confidence that once gamers got their hands-on with the game they would feel more comfortable that what they know and love about Devil May Cryis going to be there. But it is a challenge. You have started a new relationship with a third party developer, and then you find yourselves in the middle of a tumultuous response from certain fans. It did raise conversations internally in terms of what we have to hold true to a Devil May Crygame, and we can’t go too far off that in terms of what we wanted to achieve.
Devil May Cry is a critical franchise for Capcom and we want it to exceed the sales of DMC 4.
“ Michael Pattison, Capcom
May Cryexperience. Otherwise you might as well create a new brand.
What are your expectations for the reboot? We are all aware that the market is challenging at the moment. But
How far were you willing to let Ninja Theory go with the game? Capcom didn’t just hand it over and walk away. We worked in parallel. We had a roundtable with Ninja Theory about where we thought they could take a fresh look, but also holding onto the core Devil
DMCis a much-loved franchise, it has been going since 2001, we have done over 11m units and we are only our fifth iteration, so we haven’t saturated the market with annual releases. There is going to be a pent-up demand for the game, we have a sizeable marketing campaign. DMCis a critical franchise for us. We are going to look to exceed sales against Devil May Cry 4.
Do you feel the series will have a more Western appeal now that it is made in the UK? Devil May Cryhas always sold better in the West than it has in Japan. There was never a commercial decision to Westernise it. It was more just a question about where we could go to bring something different to this franchise and we thought that if we kept it developed internally, we wouldn’t challenge ourselves and we’d be to wedded to what we have done before. That is why we pitched it out to Western developers.
How are you feeling about the Q1 release window? Because we had Resident Evil 6out on October 2nd, we wanted to move DMCand give it the time it deserves. The game is ready. We’re very happy with the quality. We have done games in January in the past, like Lost Planet, so we are comfortable with that as a window. People will come out of Christmas with money in their pockets to buy the best game that is out in that timeframe. February has turned out to be busy, so we are happy with our choice.
How does your marketing compare to previous DMC campaigns? It’s more aggressive. We have been spending money across the cycle, and it has been a longer cycle than before. And we have been spending money earlier to try and engage people. The drive has been to work on the pre-orders. From an above- the-line perspective, we will be spending adequately across print, online, TV and cinema.