Darkstalkers Resurrection Sales "Disappoint" Capcom

[Gahars]

Darkstalkers, aka "The franchise where Morrigan and Felicia come from", has a pretty deep cult following. The fans were able to convince Capcom to take another stab at the series with Darkstalkers Resurrection, which came out on PSN and XBLA last month.

It's had some success, too. It worked its way to the PSN Top Sellers list, coming in at number 7 (placing it ahead of Black Ops II). Sound like a nice little success story, right?

Not if you're Capcom!

"Sadly, it's not as high on that list as it really needs to be to be successful. We're working on promotions and the like to improve the situation. We've not given up," Capcom Senior Vice President Christian Svensson said in a message posted in the "Ask Capcom" forum. "But I'm disappointed in the opening sales response relative to any other fighting title we've put out on the same platforms given the frequency and urgency of requests we've had here over the last several years and the quality of the execution."

The problem, it seems, is not with the game, which has received solid reviews, but simply that Capcom expected too much from it because of all that "frequency and urgency of requests" business. "I'm not blaming fans who did buy it and supported the brand. I'm very thankful for those guys (thank you, to all of you)," Svensson wrote. "I'm more disappointed by my misread of the information in this particular case."

Svennson said last week that Capcom had "probably run the course" with updates of games like Darkstalkers, adding, "It seems the novelty of such projects is wearing off even within just the fighting game community based upon the sales data of our last two launches."

The Escapist

Capcom, you went full Square Enix.

That last comment is also extremely worrying. Sure, Capcom only specifies that they're talking about fighting game revivals... but yeah, I doubt this is going to inspire much enthusiasm for revivals of other ailing franchises. (On a completely unrelated note, how ya holding up, Mega Man fandom Mega Mandom?)

In closing, success is no longer successful enough. And people ask why we can't have nice things...

 

[Rizsparky]

Doesn't surprise me as the fighter genre is now heavily saturated, didn't know there was a large following of Darkstalkers out of Japan anyway.

 

[Chary]

Capcom is disappoint.

 

[Clydefrosch]

I guess if you'd put that on a disk and put it on the shelves, then make some ads for it, promote the fact that it has those big breasted succubi and other such lovable characters then maybe some more people would have bought it.
Also, if they had done a new game, with new characters and other such crazy things, instead of 'just' a hd remake with a few online features, maybe it would have been better too. I mean, in my eyes, a revival consists of more than giving an old title a slight update.
Even if they had just added the winner from that character design competition, that would have been a start.

 

[UltraHurricane]

I'd hate to paraphrase Jim Sterling but yeah, I think publishers are expecting a little too much from games right out of the gate

Exactly how well was Darkstarlkers Resurrection supposed to do in their eyes? Personally I think it did pretty well for a game that only had a cult following and little promotion.

 

[2ndApex]

Love Darkstalkers and I know that there hasn't been a release in forever (and never with online) but you can't really expect a rerelease to do that well.

Hopefully this doesn't negatively affect the development of the real new Darkstalkers game.

 

[FAST6191]

The cynical side of me openly wonders if game companies are finally seeing the light vis a vis long tail sales and realised that if they complain about the short term ones then bam free publicity.

 

[Reploid]

I'm surprised that even single person bought half-assed emulator with but one ROM and ugly filters.

 

[Deleted User]

can we say capcom is officially nuts?
I'm pretty convinced they expect every single person on earth to buy every game they release.

I remember a statement from capcom a few years ago saying they wouldn't be satisfied util they become the #1 video game company, and looking back, they're taking it a bit too serious...

they're taking advantage of the fact that nowadays video games are more casual thing, reaching a broader audience, and so they are shooting down all fanbases since franchises are established and sales are granted with their support or not ( also the fact that a lot of people are hypocrites can't resist if a game from a franchise they love is out , example: joe protests on the forums "capcom is a horrible company, I will never buy something else from them" while pre-ordering resident evil revelations on steam ) so they just don't care about people's opinions anymore.

Why take the risk of developing a new darkstalkers and not selling enough when you can make a good sale with just make a new street fighter or resident evil? or just a port of them

I'm kinda tired of seeing them trying to cash-in for "classic" games, like son son or nes megamans or whatever too, they are just taking advantage of the fact that most new gamers are too new to know most of these games. Sure, megaman is a classic and stuff and it's not all they have but they make it sound as if it was the only good thing capcom made in the 80s/90s (also, they're using those megaman releases to keep megaman legends fans at bay with false hope of something more than another 8bit megaman), there's lot of awesome snes and gba games I'd love to see getting another chance, even if as virtual console releases on 3ds, but they prefer to leave there only sure sale titles like megaman ( or collections like capcom classics with some lame games + 1 actual classic game ).
Also, I don't get monster hunter, I don't really enjoy the games but I at least try it every time a new one is released (at a friend's), it's amazing how little the series evolved and how well it sells, also, such a cheap character customization... other franchises from capcom evolved so much in 3 games, but that one barely feels any different. ( a random fact, the felynes from the monster hunter spin offs are a redesign of the megaman legends' servbots, so they can still keep cashing in its most charismatic characters without having to revive megaman legends )


I secretly wish people would boycott capcom for some time for real ( preferably a whole year ) so they could rethink their actions, but i know it won't ever happen

 

[gusmento01]

Last time I played a Darkstalkers was back in 90's,the psone version, I remember renting it on Blockbuster and returning in the very next day.

 

[Arras]

What, they expected it to sell like Marvel vs Capcom or something? Huh.

 

[Taleweaver]

Released in mid-March, the 2D fighting game Darkstalkers Resurrection managed to muscle its way to seventh place on the PSN Top Sellers list, just behind BioShock Infinite and ahead of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Decade Duels Plus and Black Ops 2

Wait...did capcom really think they could outsell bioshock infinite?

I can somewhat understand that they're comparing it to their other fighting games, but surely that's not the only factor they're using to compare how well it does...right?

 

[Rayder]

You know, I used to love fighting games, but "fight the next guy, fight the next guy" gets old pretty quickly nowadays. No matter how intricate the fight mechanics may be, they are still very shallow games.

 

[Mantis41]

It's not the sort of thing I want to play on a console would be better on a handheld.

 

[Rydian]

I'm surprised that even single person bought half-assed emulator with but one ROM and ugly filters.

And your source for this is?

 

[Taleweaver]

Guys...that Iranian time machine totally works. I just went to the future and brought back proof:

Capcom will claim that Duck Tales remastered won't meet its preset goals.

You heard it here first.

And Iranian master race FTW!

 

[Reploid]

And your source for this is?

Are you kiddin' me? Just look at this disaster! It's obviosly same lowres sprites with some kind HQ2x or SuperEagle put on. They didn't do a damn thing to port the as it shoul be. MAME or FBA can make it look better (with filters like XBR5 avaible), just w/o achievments.

 

[Rydian]

Are you kiddin' me? Just look at this disaster! It's obviosly same lowres sprites with some kind HQ2x or SuperEagle put on. They didn't do a damn thing to port the as it shoul be. MAME or FBA can make it look better, just w/o achievments.

Got a comparison?

Because your story seems to change, you said it was already a ROM with filters...

 

[2ndApex]

No matter how intricate the fight mechanics may be, they are still very shallow games.

If you go to EVO and make it out of pools in any game I'll pay for your registration fee and your entire fucking trip.

 

[Foxi4]

And your source for this is?

To be fair, the game does look dated as hell - they could've go with the "Tatsunoko vs. Capcom" approach and make a contemporary-looking fighter... but they didn't and it does look a bit "Virtual Console-y" no matter how you slice it. I mean, it's not even 16:9, it shows a small screen with a border around it.