Svensson: “Mega Man is a Key Brand for Capcom and Will Remain So”

Game Informer spoke to Capcom’s Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development, Christian Svensson, for an article titled “What’s Happening at Capcom” in their 225th issue. And now, that interview is online.
Within, Svensson and Game Informer‘s Tim Turi discuss working with Western developers, franchise fatigue, and of course, Mega Man. Following are some excerpts from the interview as it pertains to the Blue Bomber.

Mega Man has played an important role in Capcom’s catalogue for many years, but recently he’s been missing in action. Is the mascot’s absence part of a larger plan to refocus at Capcom?

Change has been a constant during my six years at Capcom (vastly for the positive) but I want to be crystal clear on this point. Mega Man is a key brand for Capcom and will remain so. I don’t have any products we’ve announced publicly that I can point to and say “see, I told you” but there are “top men” (“top men”? “Yes, top men”) within Capcom thinking about the future of the brand and where it’s going. We will have official announcements in due course.

We know there are people who will dismiss this for one reason or another, but it honestly sounds like they mean it, and have simply been caught with their proverbial pants down as it relates to the brand following the cancellation of the two key titles that were in the pipeline.

From an outsider, Capcom appears to be in a state of unease with its community. Fans have reacted negatively to the canceled Mega Man games, specifically the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 after they were called upon for development help. What are Capcom’s plans to win back the trust of their most hardcore fans?

This is absolutely an issue that keeps me up at night. Unfortunately there are times that we have to make decisions that don’t make sense to the community and the fallout, while understandable is regrettable. Our relationships with fans are extremely important and I know we’ve got some that are disenfranchised right now.

Unfortunately, in this situation, there is no panacea. It’s going to take time to rebuild those bridges. Product cycles are long and it’ll be a little while until fans can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And the last thing I want to do is prematurely announce something in the name of sating the fans that gets cancelled or redirected later, thereby creating an even larger wound. I can only ask for people’s patience.

In the meantime, we’re going to be stepping up our community engagement efforts in the West.

For example, we recently introduced the concept of “Fright Clubs” for Resident Evil and Dead Rising projects patterned after our extremely popular “Fight Clubs”. In addition we have now established Fight Clubs in the UK and will be rolling them out in Europe over the coming months. We’ve got a few ideas for how to expand these concepts to some of our other brands too, but I’m not ready to talk about those yet.

Lastly and possibly most importantly, we’ve got a relaunch of our extremely popular Capcom-Unity.com site coming soon that I hope will provide deeper engagement with Capcom employees and significantly expanded functionality.

For the full interview, be sure to head over to Game Informer’s website, where Svensson talks about other, non-Mega Man-related issues as well.

Source: via Official Nintendo Magazine

LanceHeart