If you thought Lost Planet 2 kicked your butt, you should see what it did to Capcom's profit forecast. The gaming giant has had to lower its expected sales and profit figures for the year. There are several contributing factors to this, a major one being the poor sales of Lost Planet 2.
Now I know you're saying: 'But how does this affect me? I'm playing Halo: Reach and I will be ignoring all other games that come out this year.' Well I'll tell you how it affects you. And don't talk out loud to yourself; people will stare.
Lost Planet 2 is part of Capcom's efforts to include co-op in more of the company's games. Someone must have told them that co-operative gaming is kind of a big deal. Former single player games that have made the jump successfully include Resident Evil 5 and the recent Dead Rising 2. We gave both games a 4.5 out of 5, and we meant it.
We liked Lost Planet 2. It was a fun co-op game that could be played with four people online or with two player split screen. Unfortunately, the game was deemed unplayable as a solo effort by some other gaming sites. Anytime a good co-op game fails commercially is a big deal to us. The publishers are in this for the money, and if a genre or feature becomes non-profitable, it becomes extinct. Luckily, LP2 seems to be the odd game out.
For you numberphiles out there:
The publisher lowered its full year net sales guidance from 95 billion yen (£716.7m / $1.13b) to 91 billion yen (£686.5m / $1.1b), and its profit forecast from eight billion yen (£60.4m / $95.4m) to 6.5 billion yen (£49m / $77.5m).
For those of you who don't know how the calculator function on your computer works, that's about an 18.75% loss. Ask any food server, and they'll tell you that 19% is a pretty decent tip. In this case it's $17.9 million dollars, or 8,950,000 ninja outfits.
The publisher also claimed that the appreciation of the yen and delay of Dead Rising 2 hurt their sales, but LP2 was the whipping boy:
Capcom has been unable to offset the large shortfall in sales relative to the plan for the flagship title Lost Planet 2 that was released overseas in the fiscal year's first quarter.
Capcom's head of R&D and global production, Keiji Inafune, said that he "still believes" in Lost Planet as a franchise. It is not known whether or not he still believes in Shenmue, Duke Nukem, or anything by Rare as a franchise (BA-zing).
Do yourself a favor and pick this one up if you haven't given it a chance. Lost Planet 2 is available for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 right now, and for the PC next week. Just make sure you have someone to play with. A couple of the levels can get a little rough if you go it alone.
I hate you, Level 3-3.
Source: Computerandvideogames.com