After the release date was pushed back several times, Living Room Games announced today that they were placing Capcom World Tournament on “indefinite hold”.

Hi folks. I know it’s been a while since I updated, and for that, I apologize. I bring bad news for our fans, though I suspect that many of you had anticipated this announcement for a while now. Regrettably, we have had to put Capcom World Tournament on indefinite hold. I am letting our forum readers know about this first, before making an official, public statement on our website.

There are many reasons for this decision, but the most outstanding one is due to the current state of the industry. I believe that in one of my last posts before my hiatus, I had mentioned a severe decline in industry performance. Though this would normally be priviledged information, I feel that it is important for our fans to understand what this really means as it will ultimately affect you as the end consumer. In speaking with the director at a major industry marketing firm, I learned that over 1100 brick and mortar retail stores selling games have closed down in the past year; less than 200 new stores have opened in that same time period. That’s about 25% of the industry’s distribution network. Also, overall industry sales figures are down somewhere in the order of 30% (I forget the exact number, but it’s around there). We are no exception to this trend.

The production costs to complete Capcom World Tournament were just much too high for us to continue, given our financial performance from the 2005 fiscal year. Even if we took the possibility of pre-orders into account, we would only get about 40% of our needed capital to continue.

While we regret having to make this decision, we feel that it is a necessary step in order to ensure the continuation of LRG as a company. Our currently available products are not affected by this decision, though future production will be slowed down to help us stabilize.

I am trying to put together a little something for our fans who have been patiently waiting for the product. I do not plan on making this a public offering, so no mention will be made outside our forums. Once it is ready, I’ll make another short announcement about it.

Our grace period with Capcom will end on March 31. At that time, we will be removing all association with Capcom and Capcom World Tournament from our website. I will allow this forum to continue after that, but under a different name so that those of you who still want to talk about what could have been are welcome to stick around.

Again, my apologies to our fans. This hasn’t been easy for me (heck, it took me 2 days just to write this post!). I can only hope that things will improve enough in the future to let us try again. Thanks for everyone’s patience and support over the last couple of years.
_________________
Joe Chan
Living Room Games, Inc.
pr@lrgames.com

Here is some material from their site:

Living Room Games’ Capcom® World Tournament Free Demo Pack 

from: lrgames.com/capcom/

Living Room Games Versus Capcom© — Fight!

Dallas, TX. – August 28, 2003 – Living Room Games announced today that it has acquired the license to publish the tabletop roleplaying games for several well-known titles from Japanese video game powerhouse, CAPCOM CO., LTD. Living Room Games will be adding the following classic CAPCOM fighting games to its lineup of products starting in 2004: Street Fighter(tm), Rival Schools(tm), Darkstalkers(tm), and Final Fight(tm). The first two releases planned for the new line are scheduled to coincide with Street Fighter’s 15th anniversary in North America.

“Living Room Games is striving to help give the hobby games industry a boost, by combining our products with other aspects of mass media,” says Joe Chan, president and lead developer for the Living Room Games/CAPCOM tabletop fighting game line. “We have planned a multi-phase approach to achieve these goals, of which the license of several classic CAPCOM titles is the first, big step. We look forward to working with CAPCOM throughout the next couple of years to bring to the market the best products possible.

“CAPCOM’s fighting games have such a significant history, which has left an unmistakeable mark in the video game industry. The opportunity that has been granted to us to allow us to bring even more life to the characters in these games, and their stories, is a great honor to us. The people that we have brought on board for the project have always been tremendous fans of CAPCOM video games, and they are absolutely ecstatic over their assignments.”

Marc Mostman of Most Management LLC, CAPCOM’s North American licensing ageny, added, “Living Room Games has shown great initiative in the tabletop roleplaying arena, and their enthusiasm in bringing CAPCOM’s classic fighting characters back into that world is exciting especially at this time when CAPCOM is unleashing a new slate of licensed merchandise in conjuntion with Street Fighter’s 15th Anniversary in 2004. CAPCOM is confident that Living Room Games will do these games justice.”

Now well into its third year in the industry, Living Room Games, Inc., a Dallas-based roleplaying game company, has published several books for the Earthdawn product line, including the Second Edition core rulebook, as well as Digital Burn, a d20 Modern cyberpunk sourcebook. Their next book, Makers of Legend: The Way of War, is expected to reach shelves in a matter of days.

Here is some material from their site:

Living Room Games’ Capcom® World Tournament Free Demo Pack