Earlier today a curious product popped up on Amazon. It's a 200+ page book called the Capcom 30th Anniversary Character Encyclopedia, which is currently listed to come out on October 21st. The details are as follows:
"Full of facts, statistics, and historical information, the Capcom 30th Anniversary Character Encyclopedia will offer any fan of Capcom's illustrious library of video games insight and background for all of their favorite characters and video game series. The Capcom 30th Anniversary Character Encyclopedia celebrates Capcom's 30 years in the industry and gives fans concise information about every major Capcom character, their key artwork, statistics, background information, and interesting notes on the history of each character and game franchise. Including almost 200 characters from the Capcom family, this Character Encyclopedia sheds new light on these characters in a way nothing else does!"
Surprisingly, the book is not being handled by UDON Entertainment. Rather, Brady Games; a subsidiary of DK Publishing (makers of some mighty fine encyclopedias). There's bound to be plenty of Mega Man content within, so this is definetly a product we will be keeping tabs on.
You can preorder your copy right now for $12.65 (normally $16.99).
Only 200 pages?
ReplyDeleteSounds kinda selective to me. Doesn't sound like a thorough encyclopedia to me. At least the price is reasonable.
Is it bad that the first thing I thought when I saw the cover is "Megaman is higher than Ryu!"
ReplyDelete^F the haters. Ryu and Street Fighter are freaken essentials to Capcom. Mega Man fans keep putting down Street Fighter because it gets the attention (it rightfully deserves) while Capcom excludes their favorite series. When in fact Street Fighter is by far Capcom's most prominent and beloved franchise, with wholehearted fans that supported its games even when most thought the series was dead. A leader in its entire genre, Street Fighter defined 2D fighting games and to this day has the most successful home console release in the company under its belt, along with arcades.
ReplyDeleteI'm not directing this at you Cyberguy64 but to all in the past and undoubtedly future who keep crying about how Street Fighter gets loved and their franchise along with themselves don't. If it wasn't for Inafune and others who supported Mega Man within Capcom, the series wouldn't have even lasted half as long as it did. Heck the best selling game in the series is still MM2 and not even reaching 2million, and don't dare tell me there aren't better are equal games produced within the franchise since then. Some single games like New Super Mario, the original Pokemon versions, some Call of Duty games outsell the entire 100+ games in the Mega Man franchise, and continue to do so. How do people expect a big company like Capcom to sustain themselves in an ever growing demanding market, while wasting time and manpower on cheap 8bit/16bit games or games that just don't sell to appease a selected few? Also the latest release in the Legends series that everyone seems to want a sequel to, sold around 15,000 units in Japan after more than a year making it one of the lowest selling on that console at the time. That's pathetic.
I believe Capcom flooding the market with anything successful until it stops being successful is a big reason Mega Man is a niche franchise, at least in regards to sales numbers.
DeleteTo add to anonymous here, the 100k Strong Movement is probably a big reason Legends 3 wasn't revived...
Not to belittle them but...
It took them an entire year to shore up those numbers (and Facebook likes are free, unlike buying a video game), when Capcom probably needed...a good five times that number in sales in about 4 months or less for Legends 3 to have been considered a success.
That being said, judging something's worth based solely on sales numbers isn't something that people not financially invested in said thing should do. The "Lowest Common Denominator" argument is a sound one.
In short, Mega Man fans SHOULD indeed stop ****ting on things more successful that Mega Man, they should stop ****ting on Capcom for putting Mega Man on ice until interest is drummed up again, and also figure out ways to make Mega Man relevant today, because development costs for a AAA game (even a portable one) is just too damn high for Mega Man.
I agree.....! To be negative is useless and not a helf for megaman....
DeleteWe need to spread the word, the serie need to be known !
I try always to talk about this serie. I did some Megaman deatmatch stand...some people liked the soul of the serie.
To be angry is useless and can bore capcom more than they can be....
Take a chill pill, Anon. CyberGuy only mentioned the image placement on the cover. The one crying in this post is you.
DeleteCapcom has plenty of candidates for the "most prominent and beloved franchise" title and every series has faithful fans. Hell, I'm a huge Viewtiful Joe fan and that series is about as dead as it's possible to get for a Capcom franchise. Do you go to Devil May Cry and Resident Evil blogs and flame their fanbases too?
As for the sales numbers, lots of great games don't get the sales they deserve. The Street Fighter games don't reach Call of Duty and Mario levels of sales either. That being said, games don't need to reach those sales levels to be profitable, if the developer/publisher doesn't overdo it on the development costs. There is room in the market for less ambitious games with smaller budgets. High budget AAA titles are very risky. The latest Tomb Raider game has sold what, six million copies and Eidos still couldn't make their money back.
I don't think many of the Mega Man fans want to see another 8-bit title at the moment. I'd welcome a 16-bit downloadable or portable title based on the original or X series, though.
And one more thing, Anon... As far as mentioning Legends 2's sales numbers, I see what you did there.
DeleteWhy did you choose to mention the sales numbers from the PSP version, a FIVE YEAR OLD STRAIGHT PORT? It would have been more honest to mention the original version's sales numbers of 88,000. Still not great, but not abysmal either.
kobun37: What the hell are you talking about? I made it a point to address the fact that my comment wasn't directed at CyberGuy, and that it was simply a reminder of the fact that in the past Mega Man fans in droves hate on Street Fighter and continue to do so, for reasons mostly unrelated to the series itself. Not my fault you can't read, or can't comprehend what was written. Also not my fault you're butthurt by some sort of unbeknownst perceived hidden message you think is applied as a flame towards any fanbase.
DeleteTo keep a large company like Capcom running you do need to manage time and resources along with profit. In case you haven't noticed most games/series that don't sale, usually end up discontinued. Who the F*** was talking about quality? I never criticized any games I mentioned on a basis of quality. In fact I even made it a point to say there are quality games that don't sale due to lose of interest in the brand by the majority. Can't you freaken read?
"I don't think many of the Mega Man fans want to see another 8-bit title at the moment. I'd welcome a 16-bit downloadable or portable title based on the original or X series, though."
^This mentality in general is proof that, you yourself can't even commit to the prospect of losing official 8-bit/16-bit productions. It doesn't matter what you like in that regard, that crap doesn't pay the bills, and continuing to appeal to the very few that support it is detrimental to the company overall.
Also Street Fighter II in all its iterations exceeds 19million units sold on home consoles, and generated over a billion in revenue in arcades, making it the most successful fighting game of all time. The best selling Call of Duty sold around 25million in global sales racking in about a billion$ in revenue, which would mean Street Fighter does not only sale Call of Duty numbers but has gone beyond it at one point. Street Fighter 4 sold over 3million units along with its update SSF4 and its iterations for a combined total of 6million units and selling. No Mega Man game on the planet has ever reached the 2million mark even at the end of its life cycle, with the addition of re-releases or even remakes. The Alpha series generated over 3million in total sales of home console ports. The one series-SFIII that Capcom invested a lot of money and manpower on that bombed, nearly killed the entire franchise. Now it took some passionate characters and tireless efforts within Capcom to even get the series going again, and this is the same series that has given the company over 14million units in sales in a single line prior. Now Mega Man at its best even if it were 5x more successful couldn't reach those numbers. Street Fighter has hundreds of thousands of people, utilizing countless hours of their lives and traveling across the world, managing and participating in organizing tournaments that some drop massive amounts of money on, on a normal basis, dedicating their lives to Street Fighter games. Some of these people have been doing so for more than half their lives. While Mega Man's community's greatest accomplishment is sorta gathering around 100,000 people by signature mind you, on a very popular free to use website after about a year. Capcom has to make a choice, do they continue to support their multimillion unit selling series that's helping them prosper, or give in to the Mega Man fans with that pathetic 100,000 signature feat?
Man give me a break. Before you come back with some silly response about my character, you should know that Mega Man is so far by far my favorite entertainment franchise ever made. I just wanted to point out mutual respect for other franchise that compose and hold up Capcom.
Doesn't really change the fact that, in this particular thread, your ranting was COMPLETELY UNCALLED FOR. Nothing about the first two comments even implied "hurr durr let's go raid the SF fanbase" or anything like that.
DeleteI don't advocate bashing other fandoms because of the situation MM's in, but this really wasn't the time or place to go off on a tangent about sales figures. (And are you trying to imply that MM's low sales figures mean that no one can be bitter about the rut MM's currently stuck in? I know that large companies need a huge amount of sales to stay afloat, but there are ways to get more people interested in a less-successful series. Ways that I don't think Capcom is bothering with at all.)
I'm too lazy to login, but I just want to say that I agree with everything kobun37 and RADIX said, really.
DeleteI know I have razzed Street Fighter multiple times here, but that is because I genuinely dislike the series. It's not just SF, either. I just don't like fighting games period. I wasn't going to express my displeasure here, but now that you brought it up and had to bring up past people who have made it known they dislike the series, I just thought I should defend myself and my stance why I am a "hater" of SF. :/ Does it deserve all the attention it gets? Not in my opinion. But that's just it. It's an opinion. One that, without a doubt, A LOT of people disagree with. And that's okay! Feel free to disagree, but there is no need to get worked up over opinions.
Anon, you're the one who brought in the butthurt into this thread. I don't care what you think about Mega Man. Saying "This isn't in response to X person" doesn't excuse going off on a tangental whiny rant.
DeleteAnd you are still being deceptive about sales numbers. I am not a fighting game or FPS fan so I don't care about either series, but to say SF compares to CoD's sales levels is simply not true. Your numbers for CoD sales are off as well. CoD:Black Ops 2 made $1 billion in sales in 15 days.
SF may have been an influential sales leader back in the arcade/16-bit era, but those days are over. Using the numbers you provided, SF4 in all its versions has not even come close to Black Ops 2's 15 day sales numbers in over four years. It's also been beaten out by Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which sold 10.8 million copies from March 2008 to March 2012. Hell, even Mortal Kombat 2011 managed 3 million in sales in six months.
But I'll repeat myself for emphasis: a game does NOT have to sell millions of copies to make money. Do you really think Capcom is making commercial release level revenue off the little mobile games they make? It's all in cost vs return ratio. Edios sold millions of Tomb Raider copies and still lost money, while Capcom keeps pumping out regular updates to Rockman Xover and Smurfs' Village.
I said not many fans wanted another 8-bit Mega Man title because while that's the general vibe I've gotten from reading here, I DON'T SPEAK FOR ALL THE FANS. Odds are there are a few who would like another 8-bit MM game. Not ME personally, because guess what? I don't like 8-bit graphics in new games. I grew up playing the Atari and NES, so it's not like I'm not used to them. It's just whenever I play a new retro game, I think to myself "Man, this could easily have been just as fun and looked so much better." On the other hand, 16-bit sprites can still look very nice.
As far as trying to encourage mutual respect, if your original message counts as respectful I'd be really interested to know what you consider insulting.
I frankly have to agree here that all the negativity towards the other franchises really needs to stop. As I've already mentioned a few times, I love MM, but it's not the only franchise by Capcom that I particularly enjoy. Hating on the other franchises just for being more successful is not going to revive MM in the slightest, nor any of the other 'dead' ones. If anything, it's good to see that Capcom still at least has a couple of successful franchises, but even those are facing problems of their own thanks to some crude business practices, and that's what makes it so concerning on a whole.
ReplyDelete@ Dr. Jerk:
DeleteI do agree about people who go off hating on other franchises. It's pointless and only serves to make others angry.
I personally don't hate Capcom for not making a new MM or Viewtiful Joe game. Nor do I go hating on other series because I don't think my favorites are getting enough attention. Was I upset when Legends 3 was cancelled? Do I wish they would make new games? Would I buy them if they came out and were good? Absolutely, but it's a business, not a charity.
Sure....!
DeleteAnyways, our megaman fanbase/community need to be more "opened" to the others games,series and people, we must spread the word and must be tolerant and opened, if not, megaman can die in the egg.....
We have so much potential.... ;)