Sometimes, less isn't more. At least that seems to be the philosophy that Capcom is subscribing to these days.

The 3rd-party giant will reportedly be releasing their titles on an accelerated timeline - doubling the amount of Capcom games each year.

As it currently stands, Capcom releases an average of two big name titles per year. You know, games that have words like "Street" and "Devil" and "Resident" in the title.

Now, according to Japanese tech site Nikkei, Capcom will be ditching their usual 3-4 year development cycle - cutting the development cycles by 1-2 years. What that means for the consumer is that we should be seeing roughly  two times the number of AAA Capcom franchise games released every year. You do the math.

In order to effectively adhere to the ambitious undertaking, Capcom plans to outsource development of some franchises to American, European, and local Japanese developers.

While faster development cycles could have advantages, it's easy to imagine that quality could be very-well be sacrificed - in the name of adherence to the ticking release clock. Shigeru Miyamoto, the god of game development himself, has often said that a delayed game could end up being better for the extra time, while a bad game is bad forever.

On the other hand, bloated development cycles have been known to produce games that turn out to be incredibly disappointing - or never materialize at all.  I'm talking to you, Too Human and Duke Nukem Forever!

So what's your take on the subject?  Is Capcom exercising sound managerial judgement or is this just an example of a solid studio worshipping at the altar of Activision?

Source: Nikkei [via Kotaku]