Capcom Talks Old Franchises & Nintendo 3DS

Capcom's Christian Svensson, Vice President of the US arm, recently spoke out about popular franchises and the Nintendo 3DS. Talking at this year's Game Developer's Conference, Svensson was questioned about subjects pertaining to the company's catalogue of Intellectual Properties and handheld support.

Check out some key quotes from the full interview:

Q: We're seeing the current trend for restructuring being shadowed by a winnowing of IP by many publishers. As a company with a broad catalogue of IP lines, is that something Capcom has looked at?

Christian Svensson: We have loads of things which we're still noodling which we haven't touched in years and years and years. We really still think there's value in trying some stuff with them. Obviously we're heavily reliant right now on a narrower range of core brands. We're looking at ways to not over-saturate the market with them.

I think that care has to be taken to avoid brand fatigue. Not to name names, I think some people are better or worse at that. We have some concerns internally about, are we doing too much of something? You may see some other stuff, which we we've been quite prolific with, take a little rest for a while whilst we update some stuff that hasn't been looked at for a while.

Q: Do you think you'll ever get back to the point where you're producing new IP again in the US?

Christian Svensson: I think we're a ways away from that. The remit at the moment is still to leverage existing classic Capcom brands - I think you see that in bigger ways than perhaps you've seen from us before. New IP for the near term? No go.

Q: How heavily influenced is that by the coming to the end of the console cycle?

Christian Svensson: Well, to clarify a bit - when I say no more new IP, I mean no new IP in the West. I think you will see us actually taking some major new IP risks.

Q: Capcom is big player in the handheld market, particularly in Japan. There are obviously some very exciting new prospects in that arena at the minute. How exciting is it to have that new hardware to work on?

Christian Svensson: Absolutely thrilling. We have a lot of projects that are in the works for handheld platforms. Stationary consoles, if you will, have migrated down to the portables. There's some really exciting content that we're talking about. I think if you look at 3DS as an example of what can be done, it's extremely robust. I don't know if you've had any time with it, but it's the console experience in you hand, plus, plus, plus more.

I think that if you look at RE: Mercenaries, and a bit later at RE: Revolutions, people are going to be just blown away. Nothing I can talk about right now though.