Companies with a large back-catalog of games have a wide variety of ways to determine which are the best candidates for porting to modern hardware, but Capcom has revealed a truly unique system for measuring who’s ready for prime-time: eBay.
In an interview with the MTV Multiplayer blog, Capcom Associate Product Manager John Diamonon discussed how the company decides which games it should bring to the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. “We go to our community to see what games should be brought back from the library,” he said. “To choose titles to revive, we see if we can give old franchises the modern touch, and we evaluate the fanbase and see if there’s a market for it.”
Part of the turf covered by “the market” apparently includes eBay. “Sometimes we see games on eBay, and that’s how you see what games people are willing to spend $80 on,” Diamonon said. He was quick to note that it’s only one part of the overall process for determining which titles are updated, adding, “It’s certainly not the only thing we do. But sometimes we look there to assess the market value of a game.”
He claimed to have spotted “some ‘versus’ fighting series games” selling for $120 during a recent eBay cruise, which would coincide with a used PlayStation 2 version of Marvel vs. Capcom 2. A factory-sealed version of the same game for the Dreamcast is listed for $225, however, while another seller currently has a factory sealed, non-Korean PlayStation 2 edition of the game listed at $1000. But Diamonon wouldn’t comment on the likelihood of seeing that title brought back to life anytime soon. When asked, he said only, “Capcom has a wide selection giving fans many choices.”
