There are big implications here for the fighting game community as well
The Game Awards 2024 unveiled some exciting announcements last weekend. For us fighting game fans, we learned that Clive Rosfield was joining Tekken 8 and a new Virtua Fighter has been teased.
Aside from that, it was interesting to learn that Capcom is reviving Onimusha and Okami in the form of modernized sequels. This news was particularly surprising considering that it’s been nearly 20 years since either series saw a mainline sequel.
It turns out that this is only just the beginning of Capcom’s plans to revive some of their dormant franchises. Capcom confirmed as much on their investor relations site.
“In addition to regularly releasing major new titles each year, Capcom is focusing on re-activating dormant IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently.” — Capcom
“In addition to regularly releasing major new titles each year, Capcom is focusing on re-activating dormant IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently,” said Capcom. “The company is working to further enhance corporate value by leveraging its rich library of content, which includes reviving past IPs like the two titles announced above [Onimusha Way of the Sword and the Okami sequel project], in order to continuously produce highly efficient, high-quality titles.”
This could be seen as a risky move by Capcom considering that these are IPs not known for selling a massive amount of units in the past. Still, it would seem that Capcom is devoted towards catering to their fans through this strategy.
“Capcom remains firmly committed to satisfying the expectations of all users by leveraging its industry leading game development capabilities in order to create highly entertaining gameplay experiences,” stated Capcom.
Okami and Onimusha both ranked quite highly on the Capcom Super Election, but it’s interesting to note that they only ranked seventh and ninth respectively on the poll asking fans about any Capcom game series (including spinoff games) that they’d like to see get a sequel or new game.
Though franchises like Devil May Cry and Resident Evil ranked even higher and have already had games recently added to their libraries, there are a number of interesting series that showed up in the top 10 of this poll. If what Capcom said is true, then we could be hearing word of highly anticipated sequels in the near future.
Indeed, this is definitely a promising sign for fans of Dino Crisis, Mega Man, Darkstalkers, Vs. Capcom, Ace Attorney, and Breath of Fire. Even if all of these games aren’t necessarily fighting games, characters from Mega Man and Ace Attorney did show up in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
Capcom has already released Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics that features many of the older collaborations between Marvel and Capcom. It’s been years since a new entry was added to the mainline Marvel vs. Capcom series, so perhaps it’s something that Capcom is already considering and working on.
Meanwhile, the Darkstalkers series also ranked fifth on the poll, though any attempts to revive the series have thus far failed. Regardless, Darkstalkers can certainly be classified as one of Capcom’s more dormant IPs.
While franchises like Mega Man, Dino Crisis, and Ace Attorney aren’t directly tied to fighting games, a renewed focus on them could actually have impact on future Capcom fighting games. Should Capcom ever venture down the path of creating a new Marvel vs. Capcom entry, characters from these games are likely to show up in some form.
The same could be said for characters appearing in the upcoming Okami and Onimusha titles. Okami was playable in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but was notably absent in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. As for Onimusha, it’s been a series missing from the Marvel vs. Capcom series.
These announcements and statements are certainly very interesting for fans. We’ll just have to see how future fighting games get impacted by this new direction (or old direction) by Capcom.