Capcom Shuts Down Dead Rising Studio; Franchise Future in Danger

[VSG]

In a statement provided by Capcom to Kotaku, we have learnt that Capcom Vancouver is being shut down. A series of layoffs at the studio this year did not seem to help the financial bottom line of the company, and a skeleton crew will operate through January 2019 to "finalize closure operations and logistics". As many as 158 people are slated to lose their jobs over this decision, and a company rep explained this action by saying "as a result of reviewing titles in development at Capcom Vancouver, Capcom has decided to cancel the development projects at this studio and will concentrate development of major titles in Japan."

Capcom Vancouver was founded in 2005, with its primary focus being the Dead Rising franchise that added a more charismatic touch to the 3rd-person action-adventure zombie genre. Microsoft helped publish the recent entries to the franchise via Microsoft Studios, and now faces a potential loss to its own exclusive game lists in the console wars. PC gamers got to play all the major Dead Rising games on Steam as well, with mixed to positive receptions in general. Kotaku further reports that several of these former-Capcom employees have been heading over to EA Vancouver ever since the first round of layoffs began. If you were a fan of the Dead Rising franchise, or even if you simply tried it out but it was not to your liking, please share your thoughts in the comments section below.



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[FreedomEclipse]

@VSG

It's "Is being shutdown" or "has been shutdown" not "is been shutdown". Youre not Ali G' please correct your grammatical errorism's please.

 

[VSG]

@VSG

It's "Is being shutdown" or "has been shutdown" not "is been shutdown". Youre not Ali G' please correct your grammatical errorism's please.

Done. It was originally "has been shut down" as per the source story, but then I noticed that was not actually the case so erroneously just changed "has" to "is" without seeing the rest. Thanks for alerting me to it, although it could have been done without that comparison.

 

[Deleted member 67555]

I bet one guy there didn't see this coming and is completely devastated...You know... that one guy that never wore an EA shirt on casual friday...probably even had an extra holiday that they called "Go apply at EA day" but instead of going anywhere he made sure his entire 401(k) was invested directly into Capcom Vancouver.

 

[sepheronx]

That sucks. Dead Rising 3 was fun. But then again, there could have been great improvements like the whole ammo and gun situation "I ran out of ammo, better discard my gun"

Oh well.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Capcom is that company who are doing the worst console porting, and also have THE WORST control system ever??

 

[eidairaman1]

That sucks. Dead Rising 3 was fun. But then again, there could have been great improvements like the whole ammo and gun situation "I ran out of ammo, better discard my gun"

Oh well.

Borderlands 2 had that for a particular weapon.

 

[hat]

Borderlands 2 had that for a particular weapon.

A whole "brand" of weapons - anything Tediore. They had the nice bonus of throwing away your exploding weapon at the enemy upon reload.

 

[eidairaman1]

A whole "brand" of weapons - anything Tediore. They had the nice bonus of throwing away your exploding weapon at the enemy upon reload.

Yup thats what I was thinking. Also I like how you can ditch a weapon. If its empty and no ammo is around, either drop your weapon and fight with fists or grab another gun or another weapon lol

 

[kastriot]

Never played it but i guess it was fun

 

[Mr.Origami696]

...bummer!

 

[dozenfury]

The Dead Rising series early on was great, but none of the sequels came close to capturing the magic of the first one tbh. And over that time the zombie/survival genre has evolved immensely. Granted DR was always arcade-y and very light on the survival, but there were aspects of what came later in other games back then.

The sad part is that it was one of the most fun early Xbox games around. It would have been a nice and probably cheap pickup for Microsoft to make an Xbox exclusive, and they could put some money into it to make it match the quality of the earlier releases. But most likely it will go the way of Medal of Honor and the other many shelved franchises. In fact there has been speculation on why MSFT doesn't buy a whole publisher like Capcom or Sega for years for an exclusives boost. Rare is trending back upwards after years of being awol, but Rare alone is not nearly enough to make Xbox relevant again.