Speaking at this week's DICE conference in Las Vegas, Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi talked about Japan's shrinking importance in the global gaming market.
Japan only makes up six percent of the total global market for game software, he said. Sales, Capcom decided, are made in North America and Europe, so Capcom has started pushing to make 70 percent of their revenue there.
During his talk, entitled Un-Japanese Games: Creating Entertainment for a Global Gaming Audience, Takeuchi walked DICE attendee's through the precarious process of trying to court "foreign" gamers without losing your studio's identity.
While struggling to come up with games that other cultures could enjoy, Capcom realized three things: risk reduction can actually create risk, you have to culturally invest in the market you're wooing, it's not always just about selling more copies of a game.
With Dead Rising and Lost Planet under their belts and apparent success headed their way with Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5, Takeuchi outlined Capcom's Ten Commandments of development. Something, MTV's Stephen Totilo summarizes smartly over on MTV's Multiplayer.
Live Blog: DICE 2009 - Jun Takeuchi, Capcom [G4TV] and DICE 2009: The 10 Commandments of Capcom Development [MTV]