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Capcom reflects on 30 years in the games industry

As reported by Polygon, Capcom celebrated 30 years as a company in June this year, reaching the same age as the average gamer and achieving similar milestones to both EA and Activision. Capcom’s director of consumer games, Katsuhiko Ichii spoke with Famitsu about the incredible achievement.

“30 years ago, I don’t think anyone imagined what smartphone gaming would be like; you didn’t even have Windows PCs at the time,” he told the Japanese publication earlier this week. “The fact that devices have both improved and are now available anyplace you want to be has really given players more choices, I feel.” In regards to changes in gaming itself Ichii said, “It’s something truly dramatic. The visual expression is something on a completely different level, and the fields we’re providing games in have also expanded.”

Over the past 30 years Capcom has created some of the most iconic and long lasting franchises in gaming including MegaManResident Evil, Street Fighter and Dead Rising. Part of Capcom’s success is largely due to the popularity of these games, which in and of themselves were revolutionary and genre-defining in their time.  “Looking back, whenever new hardware came out, we’ve always managed to create new content for that hardware, and that wound up bearing new fruit,” Ichii said. This rings true as Capcom have unveiled Dead Rising 3 and Deep Down this year, the former exclusive to Xbox One and the latter to PS4.

“There’s something that really gets a rise out of our developers whenever they hear about new hardware,” Ichii told Famitsu. “It’s like the ‘we gotta do it’ switch gets turned on, and that sort of DNA might be a tradition across Capcom’s history.” Capcom still have big plans for the remainder of 2013 with several games being released across all platforms. DuckTales Remastered, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, Lost Planet 3 and Monster Hunter 4 are all planned for this year with Ultra Street Fighter IV and Deep Down coming in 2014 and the previously mentioned Dead Rising 3 set to launch with the Xbox One.

Ichii also told Famitsu that the quality of Western-developed games has been increasing at such a rapid rate that Capcom were afraid of being left behind, ” It was to the point where we had an emergency meeting with the staff during E3.” He added, “This was partly a technological thing, partly a matter of ideas and uniqueness for our own titles. I feel like the concept or vision behind our games has always stood out, but we needed to apply more polish to them.” Ichii believes that finding that uniqueness is the key to Capcom’s continues success, “I think we’ll see advancements in technology and play styles in the future, but I think that uniqueness is what we really need to secure for ourselves.”

What are your fondest Capcom memories?

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