Creating new IPs isn't as hard as advertising them.

Fresh from GameIndustry.biz comes this delightful article rife with quotes from Christian Svensson.

"There is nothing more difficult in this business than launching new IP," he said. "Capcom is fortunate, and I think has a better track record than most - we do very few licensed properties. Look across our history, and our portfolio of products, and they are all things that we own and control. Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, Lost Planet, Dead Rising, Okami, Megaman: these are all iconic brands.

"And I would look at Okami, Dead Rising and Lost Planet as three of this generation's(ish) successful new launches. We brought back Street Fighter to be relevant again, after a nine or ten-year hiatus of re-releases and rehashes. These are really hard things to do."

Someone should probably Tell Svensson that SF has always been relevant. People are always interested in a new Street fighter game. Look at the support of Udon's SF comic books, or the multitude of Street Fighter and Darkstalkers fanart on sites like Deviantart. Or look at any corner store or arcade that's still around. Most likely there's a Street Fighter machine that still haunts those places. Okami is just now doing well, but that had more to do with refitting the game for Wii for the people who missed out (People tend to forget that Twilight Princess came out around the same time as the PS2 version). Don't even get me started on Dead Rising. It's a good game, but coming from the home of Resident Evil, I don't really see this as a new IP. Besides, could the "this game is not related to or authorized by George Romero." statement be any more obvious?

However, this isn't the point of this rant article (Ranticle?) The point is that maybe Capcom would fair better at new IPs if they maybe changed up the way they're going about them. I mean Spyborgs didn't exactly go the way they wanted it to, and that's after revamping the game from what it was shown off as to what's on the shelves today ). Also, really?....Really? Tell me with a straight face that you seriously expected a game like Spyborgs to sell impressive numbers (as of yesterday it's now $19.99 at Kmart). Even if you did believe that why didn't you give the game ample advertising? It's almost like you never had faith in the product in the first place.

I hope you take this to heart with Dark Void, or it's going to pretty much be the same result. Sure you can pimp Street Fighter 2 till the cows come home, but the reality of it is fighting games are popular. you already have that interest there, but if you're not generating interest and doing enough to market your new games then the result is failure, and then we go back to wondering why it's so hard to predict game sales