The GHZ Forum

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^Capcom is closing Clover Studio

1up wrote:Accordingly, Clover Studio is being closed down at the end of March 2007. It hasn't been disclosed what will happen to the staff at the studio, but if Capcom doesn't want to hold on to them, they will surely find work elsewhere, thanks to their titles being critically acclaimed worldwide.

Well, that sucks outrageously. It's also kinda confusing. Didn't Okami hit number 1 in the sales charts, in the USA at least?

Here's the press release that the Wiki page linked to.
Well shit. This is part of why I hoped Ōkami would sell well. Perhaps the trouble can be attributed to poor sales of God Hand; I assume Viewtiful Joe sold well considering the many sequels and the anime spin-off?

The impact of the dissolution of Clover Studio Co., Ltd. on the financial forecasts, separately announced on the same day, is inclusive as part of Extraordinary Losses amounting to 400 million yen.

Clover wasn't profitable in the short term, but they were really really close. $4 million isn't really that much money. Goodbye creative developer. I'll miss you.

just need Treasure to stop making games and Team Ico to quit and I can give up on gaming altogether. Phew, well its been 22 years, guess it had to end somewhere!

Really, this industry is turgid shit. If a creative masterpiece like Okami can't cement a new studio's position in it, then theres not really much hope at all for the future.

Shame. I've gotten to like whatever Clover Studios punched out. They had that ability to make me interested in generally whatever games they created.

I'll always remember back in 2003 when I played Viewtiful Joe for the first time on that GameCube demo, along with F-Zero GX and a couple other games. It was around that time my interest in the gaming industry rekindled, hoping we would enter an age of innovation and creative freedom in gaming.

Three years later, creative forces are dying one by one as original games, games with genuinely satisfying gameplay, get washed away in the regurgitated sea of cash-ins. I could go on about how the industry is "killing" innovation, but this isn't about that. It's about Clover, and I hope the people working at that studio find another outlet for their creativity, be it another game developer to host their works or another medium altogether. I suggest all of you out there yearning to create something fun and unique to do the same.

Damnit.

Actually, Atsushi Inaba and a lot of the team members left Capcom awhile ago. Capcom closed the doors on a studio that was already abandoned.

Did they? How long ago did that exodus take place?

I'm sure Inaba will start his own independent studio, produce 1 or 2 low-budget original titles that may or may not be badass, utterly fail to recoup development costs, and either file bankruptcy or undertake dubious anime or comic tie-ins outsourced from larger publishers. That's how things work nowadays, isn't it?

<anguish>

undertake dubious anime or comic tie-ins outsourced from larger publishers

Go Treaure!

Q: We’ve heard that the famous creators such as [Resident Evil creator] Mr. [Shinji] Mikami, [Okami producer] Mr. [Atsushi] Inaba and [Devil May Cry director] Mr. [Hideki] Kamiya have quit, is this true? Why didn’t they come back to Capcom?

A: Mr. Mikami had already left Capcom in November 2005 but signed on a separate contract with us. Mr. Inaba and Mr. Kamiya have also left Capcom in June and July of this year respectively. Naturally, we had hoped that Mr. Inaba and Mr. Kamiya to come back to us, however, both of them told us that they wanted a new challenge at a new environment. As far as Capcom’s concerned, now all the resources should be used more effectively and more efficiently since they are centralized.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?optio ... 4&Itemid=2

now all the resources should be used more effectively and more efficiently since they are centralized.

Teehee.

Good heavens. How about Inafune, then? Not that he's done anything especially interesting since Mega Man X.

There were some slight rumblings in the Mega Man community a while ago that he wanted to jump overboard too. (If you didn't know, he directed Dead Rising.)

Jesus, what stink bomb got thrown into Capcom's offices all of a sudden? I thought they were doing pretty well with what they had.

Popcorn wrote:Well, that sucks outrageously. It's also kinda confusing. Didn't Okami hit number 1 in the sales charts, in the USA at least?

Okami sold more units in Japan in a week than it did in the USA for 12 days.

Japan = 112,000

USA = 87,000

And it was still considered a bomb in Japan. God Hand also did poorly there and I wouldn't be surprised if it bombed here also.

God Hand just shipped this week in America, but even at a budget $30 I doubt it'll sell well.

So basically everyone of any talent just left Capcom? Wow.

Maybe the best thing to do now would be for them to sell all of their character licenses to Nintendo and just quietly shut down . . .

Okami was the only thing that came from them that interested me. I lost interest in Viewtiful Joe when I realized it was just another cheap, frustrating Capcom action game, like most of their action games.

What would you have wanted to remember Clover by? A company that made a couple of cute, fresh games, or a studio that pimped out 15 Viewtiful Joe titles?

Green Gibbon! wrote:Good heavens. How about Inafune, then? Not that he's done anything especially interesting since Mega Man X.

You're talking about Maverick Hunter X, right? Because you've already stated your love for Legends more than a couple times.
On this subject, there's a petition going to port/continue the MHX and Megaman: Powered Up series on the Wii. I would post it here, but I guess there's that "Thou shalt not advertise thy shite" rule and all that. If you're hopefully interested, see more on Megaman Network's latest news post.

They could just cut back on the graphics a bit and put 'em on the DS . . . You'd hardly notice much of a change in Powered Up's style, at the least.

I never liked Viewtiful Joe, at all, but I dind Okami intriguing, and wish to play it.

Too bad there will be no incentive for a port.

I loved Viewtiful Joe. The sequel was a huge dissapointment that actually had less features than the first.

The DS game wasn't too bad, though.

Zeta wrote:They could just cut back on the graphics a bit and put 'em on the DS . . . You'd hardly notice much of a change in Powered Up's style, at the least.

I can't be certain, but Inafune made a comment that sounded along the lines of "it's PSP or nothing" for the remakes. It was in response to the confusion when so many of the promised features for X Collection got the chop, supposedly by his request (or demand if you want to look at it that way).