Although  some of us may wish it were true, imagine if making a profit off of video games involved little else but a crystal ball? Well, we could then forget all about the analysts and the Reggie Fils-Aime’s of the industry and focus on making innovative, quality games, rather than milking franchises to break even come fiscal year. Okay, imagination people! Stay with me here… besides, maybe losing Reggie wasn’t a good idea to begin with.

But in reality, making a profit in the industry seems to be only getting more difficult and complex. Capcom has a plan, and they’d like to share their proverbial crystal ball - a method of seeing if a game is going to make it or not… within a week. Now every entertainment industry generally has a way of measuring this overall - for example, you’ll hear about a "strong opening weekend" in the box office for movies, and the movie may hold the top spots for months. Video games usually go off NPD, which is generally a monthly process.

Christian Svensson, Capcom’s VP of business development and strategic panning, provides an insight into this process in one MTV Multiplayer blog:

“The sales life cycle of a product is shrinking,” said Svensson. If a game undersells its first month at retail, it’s finished at retail. Often, though, it’s quicker: if a game underperforms its first week, it is more than likely “dead on arrival.”