In a Q&A session held earlier this week, president Haruhiro Tsujimoto became the second high profile Capcom employee this month to get all negative when it comes to the company collaborating with Western studios.
Answering a question on Capcom's "alliances" with overseas developers, Tsujimoto echoes comments made a few weeks back by Resident Evil producer Jun Takeuchi (not to mention reminding us of his own personal scars), by essentially saying that it's hard, hard work joining forces with an international studio.
"Our experience with Bionic Commando has demonstrated the difficulty of outsourcing the development of new title to overseas companies", he said. "Nevertheless, we cannot develop a sufficient number of titles without using the resources of these companies. This is why we plan to continue using these alliances."
"We are considering ways to separate the roles of activities in Japan and overseas. We plan to develop new titles primarily in Japan. Overseas companies may be used mostly to develop titles for existing game series with well-established characters and universal themes. Overseas companies will also handle certain parts and/or lineups of such games."
So the West is a sequel farm for Capcom IP. And just like that, Capcom's decade-long program of reaching out to international developers in order to increase their global market share misses the point entirely.