Capcom has touched on the subject of classic franchises Dino Crisis and Onimusha, revealing that while the Japanese giant hasn’t permanently closed the book on either series there are currently no plans to resurrect them at this point in time.
Speaking during a chinwag with IGN, the company’s vice president of strategic planning & business development, Christian Svensson first addressed samurai outing Onimusha, admitting that one of the main reasons we haven’t seen a new game is due to the fact sales have been lagging ever since the second instalment hit shelves.
"Onimusha is tricky in particular given how Japanese-focused the franchise has been," commented Svensson.
"When you look at the timing and sales trend of how Onimusha has gone each outing – I won’t give you the exact numbers, but let’s just say every outing subsequently has been about 60% of the prior – the brand doesn’t right now have quite the resilience that you might think."
"While Onimusha 1 and Onimusha 2 are among our more successful titles, Onimusha 3 and Onimusha Dawn of Dreams, not so much," he added.
That’s not to say Onimusha has been forgotten about, though, with Svensson revealing that there are still discussions regarding the future of the series continuing at Capcom HQ. And while nothing has been set in stone, it seems we’ll likely see something in the series materialise at some point down the line.
"For the time being I think it’s in percolate mode, that is to say, it’s not forgotten internally, there are discussions that go on, but I don’t think anyone has sort has come up with the ‘that’s it’ idea of how to get the game back up to 3 or 4 million units."
"You may see some things of the brand pop up in the future, I can’t say what, but there are certainly discussions about it."
Moving on to Dino Crisis, Svensson didn’t mince his words in regards to where he felt the series took a stumble, placing the blame firmly at Xbox outing Dino Crisis 3’s doorstep.
"Dino Crisis 3 I think is where it went off the rails if I recall. Dino Crisis’ success really was an out cropping of Resident Evil 1 and 2," he said.
“Though the franchise hasn’t been forgotten, he revealed that the halls of Capcom weren’t exactly buzzing with ideas for a new Dino Crisis, in fact – it doesn’t even have someone to champion its cause.”
However, while there have been on-going talks at the Capcom code house regarding more Dino-blasting antics, it doesn’t appear as though company bigwigs are overly optimistic on the idea of revisiting the series anytime soon – at least, not until someone pipes up with “something incredible,” claims Svensson.
"There are discussions, Dino Crisis comes up from time to time, but there isn’t any burning desire from R&D or the business side to light that franchise back up again."
"Until there’s an internal champion with something incredible, things just sort of sit there,” he explained.