Answering a question on Capcom’s “alliances” with overseas developers, Tsujimoto echoes comments made a few weeks back by Resident Evil producer Jun Takeuchi (not to mention reminding us of his own personal scars), by essentially saying that it’s hard, hard work joining forces with an international studio.

“Our experience with Bionic Commando has demonstrated the difficulty of outsourcing the development of new title to overseas companies”, he said. “Nevertheless, we cannot develop a sufficient number of titles without using the resources of these companies. This is why we plan to continue using these alliances.”

“We are considering ways to separate the roles of activities in Japan and overseas. We plan to develop new titles primarily in Japan. Overseas companies may be used mostly to develop titles for existing game series with well-established characters and universal themes. Overseas companies will also handle certain parts and/or lineups of such games.”

So the West is a sequel farm for Capcom IP. And just like that, Capcom’s decade-long program of reaching out to international developers in order to increase their global market share misses the point entirely.

This begins with the standard demo sequence of NES Bionic Commando, but hang in there. Not only do you get the final level but – after the credits – Master D’s exploding cranium, rendered in Lego brick.

Bionic Commando: Lego Armed [Capcom-Unity]

As part of a Q&A from the company’s recent fiscal earnings conference call, company President Haruhiro Tsujimoto gave his two cents.

“Our analysis indicates that the game elements were not well received by customers”, he said, “and that our management of overseas subcontractors wasn’t thorough enough.”

Translation: broken game, blame management, blame Grin. Interesting that he’d single out Grin (and Capcom’s lack of thoroughness), especially when at the time of him saying this, the Swedish devs were still in business.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Capcom, however, as Tsujimoto says the company learned a valuable lesson or two from the whole thing.

“Establishing partnerships with subcontractors allows us to absorb their know-how and incorporate it into Capcom’s own development process” the bossman said, consoling shareholders. “We will take what we learned from “Bionic Commando” and apply these lessons in the future.”

In a letter from GRIN founders Bo and Ulf Andersson, the CEO and director, respectively, write that “too many publishers have been delaying their payments” to the developer, ending the 12-year-old company officially. The Anderssons lament their “unreleased masterpiece that we weren’t allowed to finish,” going on to thank their partners and the publishers who apparently did pay them.

GRIN was reported to have filed for bankruptcy earlier today, with Swedish news radio outlet Sveriges Radio citing the economic climate at the root cause of the closure.

Develop also reports that some former GRIN employees have founded a new studio, Outbreak Studios, which plans to focus on downloadable titles for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iPhone, Games for Windows Live and PSPgo. Outbreak was founded by former GRIN lead programmer Peter Bjorklund, whose credits unfortunately include Terminator: Salvation.

Best of luck to the guys and gals at GRIN. We really would’ve liked to see what became of that “unreleased masterpiece.” And thanks to all of our tipsters—Guendolin, Khoi and Johan—for the helpful info.

The last Credits from the brothers GRIN [GRIN]

In the wake of a round of layoffs earlier this year, it’s now being reported that the company have closed their studios in Barcelona and Gothenburg, while employees at GRIN HQ in Stockholm, Sweden, are also being “told not to show up for work”.

We’ve contacted GRIN for confirmation, and will update if we hear back from them.

If true, it’s a sad fate for the company behind Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Then again, you may not be as sad if you paid for Wanted. Or Terminator Salvation. Or Bionic Commando…

Report: Developer GRIN Sees More Layoffs, Potential Studio Closures [Gamasutra]

According to the Japanese publisher, the game has shipped 550,000 copies to retailers since launch. And that’s a worldwide figure. That would be impressive, if we didn’t have the sneaking suspicion many of those copies are still in the hands of said retailers.

Ascension City has been taken over by terrorists, which turns out to be good news for Nathan R.A.D. Spencer, pardoned from execution at the very last minute and sent behind enemy lines as humanity’s last defence against whatever it is that those terrorists are up to. PC gamers can now experience this sequel to the arcade classic, just as not a whole lot of console owners did earlier this year.

The game goes live on Steam in about an hour and a half, ringing up at only $US35.99, which is $US4 off the suggested retail price. As an extra bonus, Bionic Commando Rearmed also hits Steam today, and Capcom’s official announcement mentions a deal where you can get both for only $US44.99, which turns out to be a savings of… $1? Well it’s a savings at least.

Kotaku AU Note: I’m looking at the Steam page right now and it says US$39.99. The bundle is US$44.99.

Check out the PC requirements below to see if Bionic Commando is right for your gaming rig.

System Requirements
Supported OS: Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista® (service pack is optional)
Processor: Dual-core processor (Intel® Core™2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ X2 5200+ 2.6 GHz)
Memory: 1.5 GB RAM
Graphics: DirectX®9.0c/Shader3.0 compatible, VRAM 512 MB (NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 series or ATI Radeon™ X1900)
Sound: DirectX®9.0c compatible sound cards
DirectX®: DirectX®9.0c
Hard Drive: 8.0 GB free space
Peripherals: Keyboard and Xbox 360 controller supported

Delayed until well after the console releases – a distressing trend we’re seeing more and more this generation – the PC edition of the game will be out on July 17. Which is next Friday!

Kotaku AU Note: Yep, it’s out next week here too.

It’s the same game, only with sharper graphics, so yeah, if you want to know what we think, read Fahey’s review.

Bionic Commando PC gets release date [Eurogamer]

After all, the same developers (Grin) released a Bionic Commando game last year that lacked the advertising, budget and horsepower of the “main” title, yet it still managed to sell over 130,000 copies during its first week on sale, despite being a port of a difficult, antiquated arcade/NES title.

So what gives? Why were there over 130,000 people willing to buy Bionic Commando Rearmed in a week, but in over a week on sale, the “real deal” couldn’t even move 30,000?

Aside from the fact Rearmed was great, and that the 130k figure includes global sales, surely price plays a part. Rearmed was an Xbox Live Arcade title, while Bionic Commando launched as a full-price retail game. The game’s long development period – which has led many to remark “oh, that wasn’t already out?” – probably didn’t help either.

But I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the game’s demo, perhaps the worst of its kind I’ve ever seen. Here we had a game with a difficult, though not impossible control scheme. At press events, demos had been preceded by a helpful, effective tutorial, which let you come to grips with the game’s swinging mechanic before hitting the streets.

But the demo was inexplicably multiplayer-only. With no tutorial. Gamers downloaded it, booted it up, then had no idea what the hell they were supposed to be doing. For a game most would only be picking up for its singleplayer experience, this was as big a marketing error as you could possibly hope for, as it generated a ton of negative buzz over the game, and these kind of titles live and die on the buzz generated by the hardcore.

Maybe Grin – and Capcom – would be in better shape if they’d just commissioned a sequel to Rearmed instead?