Capcom has had a big 2019 already, releasing two heavy-hitters, Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5, almost back-to-back. However, expect the rest of the year to be a little quieter for the Japanese publisher, as the only “major” release planned for the company is this fall’s Monster Hunter: World expansion, Iceborne. According to Capcom, this is due to the increasing length of AAA video game development.
More specifically, Iceborne is the only major release Capcom has planned for its 2020 fiscal year, which began in April 2019 and ends in March 2020. So, we can reasonably expect no high-profile releases from some of Capcom’s biggest franchises in the near future.
“It is a reality that development cycles are trending longer for games developed to a world-leading standard,” Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto said during a recent financial meeting. Since the length of time it takes to develop a game is getting longer for Capcom, that ultimately could impact the flow of games we see from the publisher.
Despite essentially being DLC for Monster Hunter: World, it will rival the size of the original game, bringing a new map on top of new enemies and a new storyline. While players will need to have completed Monster Hunter: World to take play Iceborne, considering it is Capcom’s best-selling title, Capcom may not be worried about that.
Though we may not see any other major games from the publisher in 2019 (and early 2020), we do know that Capcom is working on a number of games in its RE engine, which powered games like Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5. Some of these games are even for the next generation of systems, all but confirming we likely won’t hear about them for some time.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne will release on September 6, 2019 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A PC release date has not yet been given.
[Source: Video Games Chronicle]
