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Capcom Enters the Trading Card Game Business

by Rainier on Aug. 10, 2006 @ 9:42 p.m. PDT

Capcom announced that it is entering the Japanese trading card game market utilizing beloved characters from their extensive video game franchises, starting with a series baed on its Devil Kings series.

Trading cards are a 50 billion yen a year market in Japan and include not only cartoon or sports figure trading cards, but also cards designed to work with special arcade machines that can access data from these cards. This particular style of trading card game is extremely popular with the younger audience and has already established itself into a profitable market.

In order to help generate a steady stream of revenue from this lucrative market, Capcom founded the internal “Toy & Hobby Section” in April 2006. This division of Capcom has developed a plan of utilizing the company’s intellectual properties in conjunction with card games. The first of these games will be based on the wildly popular “Devil Kings” series. The division estimates sales reaching 500 million yen over the next year.

The Devil Kings series of games are stylish action games based around famous generals from Japanese history. The latest installment, “Devil Kings 2”, for the PlayStation2 has enjoyed excellent sales since its release on July 27th and has become a headline title for Capcom. The trading card game based on this series will not only feature brand-new designs by famous comic artists to enhance the collectability and value, but will also implement easy-to-follow rules to help garner interest from beginners new to the exciting world of trading card games. Capcom feels this will help appeal the game not only to traditional trading card game fans, but also to a new segment of fans such as the female fans of the video game series.

Capcom is actively pursuing a policy of content multiple-use by expanding out its intellectual properties with televised cartoons and movies. In order to generate a synergistic effect for improving profits using the content generated by the video game aspect of the company, future strategies will include trading card games as well as publication of strategy guides and toy sales.

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