Yoshinori Ono is no longer head of the division that houses Capcom's fighting games, Monster Hunter's Ryozo Tsujimoto has taken the helm
Ono remains on board as a General Manager
Capcom's fighting game personnel changed around fairly recently as the well known Yoshinori Ono has taken on a lesser job title while Ryozo Tsujimoto, best known now as the face (Producer) of Monster Hunter, has taken over.
That's not to say that Ono is by any means out of the Capcom fighting game loop, but the turbulent release of Street Fighter 5 paired with the unfortunate failure of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite more than likely led to some big changes in management.
The story starts back in 2014 as Tsujimoto got promoted from "Head of Consumer Games Development Division 3 and General Manager of Department 3" to "Corporate Officer (Additionally Assigned) Head of Consumer Games Development Division 3 and General Manager of Department 3."
Monster Hunter absolutely thrived in Japan. This was evidenced by huge sales as well as the fact that an MH-themed attraction opened at Universal Studios Japan in 2014.
Tsujimoto would begin setting his sights on the rest of the world during this time, while Ono and his team would begin preparing for Street Fighter 5.
Long time Street Fighter fans will recall Ono's temporary step down due to health issues in 2012, but it does not seem said issues were a contributor to this recent change as Ono's official title in 2015 was Head of Consumer Games Development Division 2 ("Division 2" includes the fighting game department at Capcom).
Street Fighter 5 launched in February of 2016, but would fail to hit sales goals and only accumulate a total of 1.4 million units sold by October of that year.
Though the game would slowly but surely continue to sell and eventually break 2 million in sales by December 2017, this would not make up for the aforementioned problematic Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
Infinite released in September of 2017 but saw tons of negative press throughout the majority of its production.
According to his LinkedIn profile Ono's nearly three year run as Head of Consumer Games Development Division 2 ended in November of 2016.
As of October 20th, 2017, one month after Infinite's release, we found that Ono's job title at Capcom had officially been listed as General Manager of Department 2, Consumer Games Development Division 3.
Though the fighting game department was seeing rough times Capcom was on the verge of breaking personal records thanks to Monster Hunter.
January 2018 saw the release of Monster Hunter World, a title that would go on to sell more rapidly than any other Capcom game in history.
By March MHW surpassed Resident Evil 5's 7.4 million units sold, and boasts 8.3 million as of the writing of this article.
Tsujimoto had further evolved the franchise and moved the boundaries out of Japan and into the rest of the world.
On April 1st, less than a month after setting the company's record with MHW, Tsujimoto was promoted to "Managing Corporate Officer, Head of Consumer Games Development Division 2 and Mobile Online Development Division," effectively putting him in Ono's previous position.
Indeed we have seen multiple movements toward a better SF5 experience since April. One of the game's most successful reveals came about at EVO in August when not only were two new DLC characters shown, but both were made available the following day.
Perhaps Ryozo Tsujimito, who we should mention is the son of Capcom’s founder and current Chairman, Kenzo Tsujimoto as well as the brother of COO and future president Haruhiro Tsujimoto, will take the latest Street Fighter entry to new heights.
It's evident that Ryozo Tsujimoto is no small player at Capcom, as he current holds almost 4% stock in the company, a tad more than even his father Kenzo. For now we'll watch to see what Tsujimoto and his team have in store as the 2018 Capcom Pro Tour season grows ever closer to its finale.
Rumors of additional DLC characters as well as new game mechanics for 2019 are floating about, but we'll have to wait to see what actually comes to fruition as Street Fighter 5 and the rest of Capcom's fighting game division march into the end of 2018 and beyond.
