Why all of Capcom's news doesn't come from Unity

Seth: First, we do try and at least have parity with everyone else, so if there's non-rumor news, Unity should have it at the same time as everybody else. Even if it's an exclusive, we'll let you know where to look.

Why does the info go to other sites in the first place? Personally I wish some of it didn't. That said, I do understand why it does in some cases. Here are a few of those reasons:

1) Editorial balance. As you might guess, *we're* excited about SFIV, but when you see that a bunch of other people who aren't paid by Capcom saying the same thing, it adds credibility. There's good reasons to have info coming from a healthy variety of sources, just like you shouldn't try and get all your real-world news from the same outlet all the time.

2) Tradition. Unity is sort of a new thing, and Capcom is a pretty traditional company in a lot of ways. Traditionally a company has info, and they send it out to press outlets to cover. For instance, we are originally a Japanese company, so a lot of assets go to Famitsu, which is a print magazine, but is still the #1 gaming outlet in Japan.

3) Total views. Although we're growing fast, giant sites have more overall traffic than we do, so the idea is that by giving them an exclusive on one of our games, you get more eyeballs on the info--especially by exposing the title to people that aren't already interested in it.

4) Retailers. Retailers don't track interest on Unity directly. They use services that track the clickthroughs on a few particular big sites, with the idea that they represent the internet as a whole (this is kind of like the Neilsen ratings for TV -- they use a handful of representatives to guesstimate the viewing habits of the public at large). I dunno how sound that reasoning is in every case, but they have to start somewhere, and that's where they start. That matters to us because if, according to that evaluation, nobody likes our game, then the retailers don't order as many, which means the game sells worse, which is bad for Capcom.

That said, a lot of sites have a paradigm more in line with the one you seem to be suggesting. Companies like Blizzard and Bungie both have their own dedicated portals which have pretty much 100% of their news. Google does the same kind of thing, but overall, most companies follow the more traditional model with press releases, exclusive story placement, etc. Capcom is currently a bit of a hybrid, with news on Unity as well as other places.

As for rumors/unreleased info/secret projects/etc. A lot of people ask me to comment on that stuff. As a gamer who is hyped about these projects, of course I'd love to, but as someone who also wants to keep a job, I can't do that. Actually I should say I *could* do that, then the internet would love me for 0.0003 internet seconds, then I would be fired, and they'd hire an even less cool guy that was better at following the internal rules. I don't actually work in PR, but I do my best to tell people as much as I can without getting fired, and even then I'm still in trouble a lot for leaking this, saying something I shouldn't have, etc. That doesn't mean some people don't still hate me (and they're free to hate me for whatever reasons -- that's what makes the internet go round!), but you do what you can, and work from the inside to make sure what we're doing is as awesome as possible.

[...] As for timed reveals, etc -- there are good reasons behind those as well. Though the internet wants everything now now now, it's a fact that timing announcements closer to the time you actually release the game helps sales overall. I could go on about that at length, but it's just an empirical truth, so don't expect timed releases to end in the near future. You might be an exception, but collective attention spans are short.

Sven: Trust me when I tell you, no one is less happy about things breaking places exclusively other than at Capcom-Unity than Seth or I.

Excellent answers though Seth.