A lot of people have asked why more Japanese companies don't release their games on the PC platform. While not directly fighting game related, it does cover some ground for people wondering about future Capcom releases for the PC.Why is Capcom the only Japanese company who releases their games on the PC? I also read that Sega said action games are for consoles and not PC, this was lame of them.
Sven: There's likely several reasons...
The PC games business in Japan itself is relatively small. So from a top of mind perspective, it's not often there for Japanese creators or executives. To embrace the PC, it requires a very global perspective, which while a lot of Japanese publishers say they are thinking globally, they're mostly only doing so with respect to the businesses they currently have, which are console focused.
On the second point, from a historical perspective, Sega is right. Historically, action games have NOT been strong performers on the PC. We continue to invest in the PC space because we do believe that if enough content is available there of that type, an audience will grow, especially when our PC versions are typically the best version of the game if you have hardware that's better than a 360 or PS3 (which these days, only takes a couple hundred bucks to do). We also want our brands to reach regions where consoles really aren't prevalent (e.g. Korea, China, Russia, India, Brazil, etc.)
Now the other part of this, is that the PC business is hard. There's increased considerations for optimization, testing and compatibility with regards to development, a non-growing (at best) retail channel (and most Japanese publishers don't seem to be embracing digital broadly yet so when that's all you look at, the decision doesn't seem unreasonable), a number of hardware partners to manage which takes a fair amount of overhead, the need for an OEM sales force which is something that doesn't exist on the console side of the business and increased customer service overhead.
Lastly, where PC is growing the fastest, has been in territories where many Japanese publishers don't actively have relationships (e.g. Russia, Brazil, China, Eastern Europe), thus even if they had the content, they may have some difficulty generating a return.
That said, Sega, and particularly Sega Europe has done quite a bit of PC development (think Total War, Football Manager, etc.). So don't paint Sega all negatively. In some ways, they're ahead of us in the PC space by a good margin.
Source: Capcom Forums.
