I’m your prom date
A story chronicling the roller coaster ride that has been the Devil May Cry series would make one hell of a book. Kicking off with a stellar first entry that was born out of the Resident Evil series, famed director/producer Hideki Kamiya knocked it out of the park.
The blame for the disastrous second entry, one that many fans disavow, was placed on Hideaki Itsuno (who was installed later in development, replacing a mystery initial director), but that incident was the fuel that fed the fire to create Devil May Cry 3: one of the gold standards of the action genre. From there Devil May Cry 4 faltered a bit but still kept the momentum rolling, then the series wandered into new territory: a westernization, compliments of Ninja Theory, with DmC: Devil May Cry.
While Capcom has basically ignored DmC completely as they’ve been singing the praises of Devil May Cry 5, the Ninja Theory effort struck a chord with many folks who had no prior interest in the series, and it went on to sell roughly two and a half million copies over the course of five years (not including the Definitive Edition). That’s not bad at all, but given that Devil May Cry 5 shipped over two million units in a little over three weeks, you can say that Capcom is happy they shifted back to internal development (which is just as well, given how conflicted DmC was from a production standpoint).
In fact they actually state that Devil May Cry 5 has “successfully reinvigorated the brand,” in their financial report detailing the fiscal year ending in March 2019, which is clearly going to lead to a lot more Devil May Cry related media in the future (a show is already in the works). While DmC had its moments, it’s great to see the series back at the forefront without any provisos. DMC5 is pretty much universally beloved by all: including Capcom itself.
Financial Highlights for the Fiscal Year ended March 31, 2019 [Capcom]
