Capcom’s side of the story on former R&D head, Keiji Inafune’s resignation, is that the company was in the process of preparing for radical reforms in their R&D operations when Inafune announced that he wanted to leave. Subsequently, his resignation was accepted.
Now that Inafune has left the company, development and strategic decisions that were originally part of his responsibilities, will be handled by a wider group of people.
In a Q&A session for the second quarter of Capcom’s fiscal year, investors were told that Inafune’s position isn’t being replaced by any one person. Instead, the R&D, business operations, quality control and other divisions of the company will hold regular meetings to reach business and development decisions.
This, Capcom believe, will allow them to consider opinions coming from several different viewpoints. “Our goal is to build an organization able to develop software that matches market needs even more closely,” investors were told.
While the top management of R&D operations will comprise the primary force that identifies the company’s major strategic objectives, actual development of individual products will be entrusted to the company’s game creators.
These creators will now include members across the company’s consumer, online and mobile sections, all of which are being combined into a single group to establish what Capcom call a “full-scale multi-platform structure.” In recent times, Capcom have emphasized their plans to use their brands across a variety of platforms, including mobile phones.
It was revealed in a recent interview with Resident Evil 5 producer and newly-appointed Corporate Director, Jun Takeuchi, that Capcom are encouraging their development staff to be more well-rounded in their skills and their directors to better understand the business aspect of development, such as release dates and budgets.
“A director is not supposed to be a creator, but a manager that thoroughly understands the corporate conditions,” Takeuchi had stated in the interview.
