There’s plenty of irony in the video game space, even if we don’t realize it at first. For example, one of the “backbones” of the industry is to make a franchise and then make numerous games for that franchise to keep it in the public eye and, more often than not, make serious money. You see it across all the big console makers and publishers, and when you have that kind of “long-term IP,” you stand out from the crowd. However, the irony is that Capcom has one such IP in Mega Man, and yet, over the last two decades, they’ve barely used the character in meaningful ways.
Sure, they’ve used him in crossovers. But if we’re being honest, that’s because it’s an easy thing to do. They’ve also brought back past games so that his older titles could have “modern collections,” but that doesn’t count as a “new game.” Fans want the blue bomber back, and soon! However, as VGC noted, during a shareholder Q&A, a question about the “super fighting robot” was asked, and Capcom was as vague as possible in their reply:
“The Mega Man series is one of our most important IPs, and we are continuously considering ways to develop it further. However, we do not have any additional information we can share at this time. While we do not disclose individual sales figures by IP, we receive a particularly high volume of inquiries about the Mega Man series from overseas markets. We will continue to focus on expanding this business further.”
As we said, it’s pretty vague, which will upset gamers who want a new entry. The last mainline game came out in 2018! Sure, the game didn’t set the world on fire, but it did sell over a million units, and that should’ve been enough for them to push out a 12th mainline title and see if they could keep things going.
Or, they could’ve done what they did during certain Nintendo handheld eras and merely “remake” the character to fit an entirely new universe and storyline. They did that before when they turned the character into an “.exe” program and even an alien!
At this point, fans don’t really care how the character comes back, so long as it’s a quality entry when he returns. Fans want to be able to play as Mega Man again, and while Capcom may be working on something with him right now, that doesn’t mean we’ll get the game anytime soon.