The Japanese company should consider leaving DRMs out of its older games. We don’t mean Denuvo; Capcom uses other types, too.
It was good news when Capcom announced that Monster Hunter World would be coming to PC. Granted, it was released later than the console versions, but the port was successful nonetheless. Suddenly, Capcom realized that porting their games to PC was worth it. It’s not like the mid-2000s when Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition, Onimusha 3, and the first port of Resident Evil 4 got scandalously bad ports. In 2021, the publisher announced that PC would be its main platform and said it wanted 50% of its sales to come from PC by 2022 or 2023.
It turns out that Capcom may have underestimated the potential for PC sales growth. The company posted its eighth consecutive year of record profits in its most recent financial report, driven by the continued success of Monster Hunter World. One interesting detail hidden in the numbers is the extent to which PC sales contributed to this success. An impressive 60% of Capcom’s digital game sales (and over 54% of total game sales, including physical sales) came from PC!
PC sales have shown an improving trend for Capcom in recent years, but this is a significant leap. In the previous fiscal year, PC game sales accounted for just over 52% of digital sales and 47% of total sales. There’s another remarkable development in unit sales: although console digital unit sales have declined slightly (from 19.7 million to 18.5 million), PC sales have increased (from 21.6 million to 28.2 million). This is a significant increase without a similar decline in console sales.
This is good news for Capcom and PC gamers alike. We can be confident that PC versions of Capcom games will be released alongside console versions. However, they should avoid forcing Enigma DRM in places that don’t have or no longer have Denuvo.
