Following the adventures of an astronaut trapped on a moon base overrun by hostile robots, the new game set for release on Friday combines tense shootouts with puzzle-based hacking, allowing players to weaken enemies mid-gunfight.<\/p>\n
The game mechanic is creatively represented on screen by an android in the form of a girl who accompanies the protagonist.<\/p>\n
Professional game reviewers have handed the new title a respectable average score of 86\/100, according to aggregation site Metacritic.<\/p>\n
Capcom’s previous release, February’s “Resident Evil Requiem”, has already sold more than six million copies, leading the charts in many countries and firing up purchases of the series’ back catalogue.<\/p>\n
That success likely powered the studio towards its target of 190 billion yen ($1.2 billion) in net sales in its 2025-26 financial year, which ended on March 31.<\/p>\n
Such results would drastically set Capcom apart from a games industry mired in post-pandemic doldrums, with many publishers closing studios and laying off staff to remain solvent or protect profit margins.<\/p>\n
Discipline<\/p>\n
“Capcom is currently in its golden generation and seems to make almost no big mistakes as a corporation,” said Serkan Toto of consultancy Kantan Games.<\/p>\n
The Osaka-based company, founded in 1983, has been growing for more than 10 years.<\/p>\n
A second building is under construction near Capcom HQ to accommodate new staff, after the company surged from 3,200 people in 2022 to more than 3,760 last year.<\/p>\n
“Capcom’s discipline as a studio has been extremely high for a long time now, with a high focus on quality, building on top of existing hit IPs and shipping on time,” Toto said.<\/p>\n
“Part of that discipline includes what Capcom is not doing,” such as “blindly acquiring other studios” or “jumping on live-service (online multiplayer) games,” he added.<\/p>\n
Other industry giants have burned their fingers in recent years, such as Sony with its team-based shooter “Concord” — pulled offline after less than two weeks.<\/p>\n
Risk-taking<\/p>\n
Stepping off the beaten path is rarely profitable in the games industry, with even Capcom bearing the scars of previous attempts.<\/p>\n
“Pragmata” is its third recent effort at a new game universe, after 2023’s “Exoprimal” and “Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess” the following year — “both of which failed”, noted Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda.<\/p>\n
“Pragmata” will be released for PC, Playstation 5, Xbox Series and Nintendo’s new Switch 2 console.<\/p>\n
Offering the game on Nintendo’s less powerful hardware is a rare choice among high-end productions.<\/p>\n
“Since Capcom develops its own game engine (the software that powers features like graphics and physics), it can adapt to the hardware much more quickly than competitors,” Yasuda said.<\/p>\n
That allows the studio to reach a larger market of players across different platforms.<\/p>\n
In some European markets, the Switch 2 version of the latest “Resident Evil” title accounted for around five percent of sales, according to specialist outlet The Game Business.<\/p>\n
That was “not a big figure, but five percent of a high selling product can still be significant and profitable”, the site commented.<\/p>\n
Capcom is also casting a wide net to snare new gamers with feature-length films and TV series adapted from its universes.<\/p>\n
New “Resident Evil” and “Street Fighter” films are both expected in cinemas this year.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the adventures of an astronaut trapped on a moon base overrun by hostile robots, the new game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-380091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}