eSports is becoming really huge with gamers getting a chance to win thousands of dollars by winning tournaments. eSports is healthy for game developers/publishers as well because the longevity of a game is longer thanks to people still playing video games online to practice for said tournaments.
Capcom is no stranger to this as the developer and publisher has made lots of previous fight games in the past that is still loved by many gamers worldwide. Street Fighter IV lasted a long time on the eSports scene since its release in 2009 and now Street Fighter V is still being played two years after release.
A recently employed Capcom VP of Product Development named Kirk Black has posted on Facebook (via Twin Galaxies) and hinted that the company is interested in making a new IP with competitive gaming in mind.
He posted the following announcement: “Recently I joined Capcom as VP of Product Development with the charter to lead the creation of their eSport platform. I’m creating and leading multiple teams including a server backend team based in Los Angeles and multiple game development teams based in Vancouver and Japan developing established Capcom IPs such as Street Fighter as well as creating new, original Capcom IP.
I’m currently focused on hiring Ruby on Rails engineers (junior, mid and senior level positions) and Dev Ops to join my server backend Platform engineering team in Los Angeles. Additionally I’m looking for a Server Game Engineer and a Unity Game Engineer for one of my original game content development teams in Vancouver. If you or anyone you know is interested, please contact me: kirkb@capcom.com“.
Twin Galaxies reached out to Kirk Black for more details, although Black says this is the only thing he can say about the project right now. Judging by Capcom’s past portfolio, it’s more than likely we might be getting a brand new fighting game different to Street Fighter!