In an internally conducted interview at Capcom, the company’s Director and Executive Corporate Office in charge of consumer games, Katsuhiko Ichii, emphasizes that Capcom are trying to break into more areas of the worldwide games market.
Part of this process involves localizing games appropriately, Ichii says. By next year, we could see Capcom games translated into 13 to 15 different languages.
“We’ve seen a great deal of expansion of markets in emerging countries and regions, such as Russia, Eastern Europe, South Africa, India, and the Middle East,” says Ichii. “When you combine the size of these new markets, they’re about as large as the markets in major developed nations such as Germany and France.”
“However, to successfully break into these regions, localizing our games is a must. Up until now we’ve only done English voiceovers for game characters, but by next year we’re looking to do voiceovers in languages of 5 to 7 countries, and have the in-game text translated into 13 to 15 languages. This will give us with a major boost in the area of game localization.”
Ichii also mentions that Capcom see PC online games and mobile phone games as a way to break into the Asian market specifically, and will be using knowhow gleaned from operating Monster Hunter Frontier Online to do so.
