Capcom US vice president Christian Svensson says that it’s “inevitable” that the publisher/developer will make more downloadable prequels in the future.
Following the success of the Dead Rising 2 prequel, Case Zero, Capcom says that it was looking at creating similar content for its other franchises. Case Zero was released a month ahead of Dead Rising 2, and went on to be the fastest selling Xbox Live Arcade game ever, with 300,000 purchases in the first week alone.
Svensson said that the company was evaluating each of its franchises independently to see whether a Case Zero-style release would be appropriate. He said that it didn’t fit with every IP, but felt that it was “inevitable” that it would happen again. He said that there was originally some concerns over whether releasing Case Zero was a good idea, as a negative response to it would significantly harm sales of Dead Rising 2. He added that Capcom had looked for outside opinions on Case Zero, in order to get a sense of how well it would be received.
One of the most important lessons that Capcom learned during the process, Svensson said, was that making something like Case Zero had to be part of the development cycle from day one. He said that trying to start it part way through development simply wouldn’t work, as the logistics of it were too difficult to coordinate. Svensson also revealed that Capcom was mulling over purely digital, episodic releases, although he stressed that this was just an idea that company was investigating, and that there was nothing in the works at this time.
Source: GamesIndustry
