Bloomberg interviewed Tsujimoto Kenzo, CEO of Capcom, on his company's future outlook on network based and distributed games.

Tsujimoto regards such software titles as a high potential growth area for his company and stresses their importance in the consideration of future game titles. In fact, he expects the share related to network games – i.e. not only online games, but also network distributed software - contributing to the company’s expected sales tripling by 2010 and to increase five- to six-fold by 2012. As examples he cited games for mobile devices like cell phones, Capcom’s own “Daletto” internet distribution portal and online offerings through Sony’s PlayStation Network, Nintendo’s Virtual Console and Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade.

For the whole company Tsujimoto envisions a 10% sales increase and a 15% operating profit ratio as a mid-term goal. Moreover, the company will strive for expansion on the overseas markets, a strategy that relies also on the expansion of said business: according to Tsujimoto sales within those fields increased by 30-40% compared to the previous year. Moreover, the Capcom CEO sees network games as “indispensable for dealing with markets worldwide”, since packaged software doesn't sell apart from in traditional and developed markets like North America or Europe.

Outlining the strategy for global expansion more clearly, Tsujimoto said: “First we have to cross our boundaries regarding mobile and PC games. After that, we will switch over to a full-blown expansion.”

In line with this strategy Capcom acquired the Canadian company Cosmic Infinity, a move which a catapulted Capcom’s mobile games division from the 60th rank in that field to the tenth biggest mobile games developer worldwide, according to the company itself. The recent announcement of the distribution of Capcom PC title Lost Planet: Extreme Condition via Valve’s Steam platform has also to be reevaluated in this light.

Nomura Securities analyst Sakurai Yuta sees Capcom returning to an offensive business strategy after a lengthy restructuring process and expects the online portal business and mobile content business eventually to contribute to the company’s profit, even if “they had somewhat of a late start”.