At the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, Capcom's Jun Takeuchi, producer on Resident Evil 5, took the stage to talk about Capcom's Westernization and Japan's view of foreign markets. While Japan's video game marketplace has been shrinking, the U.S. and Europe have experienced rapid growth and Capcom intends to leverage that by aligning 70 percent of its sales with the West.
Among Japanese game companies, Capcom in particular has excelled at creating games that appeal to non-Japanese audiences. Takeuchi outlined the so called "Ten Commandments of Capcom Development," as outlined below:
1. Keep staff turnover below 10% per annum
2. Maintain the ability (and cash reserves!) to increase personnel by 10% each year
3. Keeping the first two points in mind, keep development cost fluctuations within 10%
4. Investment in new IP needs to be kept within 20% of total development budget
5. The structure and organization of the company needs the flexibility to change in response to growth; goals and objectives must constantly be reviewed
6. Goals and objectives must be adaptable to external forces
7. Objectives and aims must always be set from the top down
8. Reform must always be undertaken from the bottom up
9. There should be no taboo areas where it comes to reform; reform must be undertaken at all costs.
10. Don't set unachievable targets
For full coverage, be sure to check out The DICE Wire, GameDaily's live blog covering the summit in Las Vegas all week. We'll be updating the blog frequently.
