Capcom are one of the more high profile members of the PC Gaming Alliance, and as such, have a vested interest in the platform succeeding. But where do they see it headed?
Capcom's Christian Svensson has gone into this in quite a bit of detail in an interview over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. First up, though, he's got to address the company's recent past on the PC:
People might remember Devil May Cry 3, Resident Evil 4, and Onimusha - these were projects that were outsourced, and run by our licensing team, rather than internal R&D. They were thrown over the wall to a developer, and the ports were quick and dirty, and even internally were not viewed favourably. As part of the licensing deal Ubisoft had the rights to distribute. Shortly thereafter the US side of our business decided to bring that back into the consumer software side and grow it.
So as you can see, they're taking it a bit more seriously than they used to. Good start. But what about the more industry-wide stuff? Svensson says that, as people like Valve and even EA would attest, the future isn't with boxed retail, which he reckons is "falling away" thanks to things like high return rates and consumer confusion. No, it's with digital distribution, which explains not only why you can get most new Capcom games on the PC, but also on just about every digital distribution service you can think of.
If you're interested in this kind of big-picture stuff, you can check out the full interview below.
Capcom On Digital Distribution, PC Ubiquity [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]