In recent years, Capcom has made it clear that its new strategy is to pay attention to the wishes of the fans and do their best to leave them satisfied. This is why we believe that few will be surprised to learn that Devil May Cry 5 exists thanks to the wishes of the community.
In a recent conversation with Gamesindustry, Stuart Turner, Operational Director of Capcom Europe and Antoine Molant, Marketing Director of this division, talked about Devil May Cry 5. For starters, Molant recognized that it is a project that exists thanks to the feedback that Capcom received about DmC: Devil May Cry and pointed out that, although the genre might not have the same appeal as before, it is a project that they decided to do for the enthusiasm of the fans.
“The last game was very good, but there were a few unhappy voices because it wasn’t a direct sequel and other things,” Molant said. “Because of that, the dev team sat down and asked: ‘Where do we take that next?’ And it was known that the community wanted Devil May Cry 5 to be closer to 1, 2 and 3. And so the project was born. We can debate whether that genre has the same appeal as it used to… that’s hard to say. The project was born because of what the fans want.”
Later, Turner said that although they listen to the fans, they do so cautiously and reservedly: “It’s fair to say that we are very focused on the audience and the feedback that we get. We have seen some horrible stories in the media recently about publishers bending to the will of the internet. We wouldn’t advocate going that far. But certainly there is an element of fan service that runs throughout the company.”
“DMC is an example of that. Fans weren’t happy, so therefore we went a different way. It’s part of giving back within the remit that we’re still a business, we still need it to sell. We want to give things to the fans, we want to support them, but it has to make sense. So we do it within reason. We don’t listen to the far extremes of the fanbase, shall we say,” Turner said.
So Molant ended by explaining that Devil May Cry 5 is a project that will come true because they expect it to sell well: “This project would never have been greenlit if it didn’t make sense business-wise. We rarely have crazy forecasts on any of our games. DMC 5 will please a fanbase that is still quite big.”
Devil May Cry 5 will release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC sometime in the spring of 2019. What do you think of this strategy? Do you think that Capcom does the right thing by delivering the products that the fans want? Tell us in the comments below.
