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Capcom president and COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto says the company’s years of continued success come down to a deliberate move away from having individual creators drive its major game series, and toward a team-based approach to development.
In an interview with Famitsu, Tsujimoto was asked how some of Capcom’s biggest franchises have managed to stay strong for decades even when the original creators are no longer leading them. His answer pointed to a significant internal shift in how the company thinks about game development.
He explained that it used to be common in the game industry for popular series to be closely tied to one specific developer. “If that person doesn’t make one, there’s no next instalment,” he said. “The direction of the series becomes tied to the ideas of a single creator.” Capcom was no different for a time, operating under that same mindset.
The change came when Capcom began to feel that this auteur-led model had its limits, particularly as the company was now publicly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and had shareholder expectations to meet. Tsujimoto said the company had direct conversations with the key figures behind each franchise and reached an agreement to move away from that model entirely.
“What we came up with instead was the idea that every title should essentially be rebuilt from the ground up,” he said. “We didn’t mind even if sales temporarily declined as a result, and by switching to a team-based approach to game development, Capcom changed dramatically.”
Under this new approach, the knowledge built up during one game’s development gets passed down to the next team working on that series, allowing franchises to maintain a consistent level of quality without being dependent on any one person’s vision. Tsujimoto also noted that many of Capcom’s current developers grew up playing the company’s games, which helps keep the spirit of each franchise alive naturally as new staff come in.
“We’ve gathered together a group of people who played Capcom games and thought ‘this is fun’ and ‘I want to make one myself,'” he said. “That’s why the IP mindset is naturally passed down.”
Tsujimoto pointed to the recently released Pragmata, which launched in April 2026, as a clear example of this philosophy in action, describing it as a new IP that “truly embodies this team-first approach to game development.” For Capcom, the shift appears to have been less about removing individual talent from the equation and more about making sure no single franchise ever lives or dies by just one person.
