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Production Studio 4 (第 4 開発部 dai 4 kaihatsubu?), otherwise Purodakushon sutajio 4 (プロダクション スタジオ4?), was a Capcom games development studio which existed from the late 1990s to 2005, ultimately being replaced with Division 1. For much of its existence it was led by Producer Shinji Mikami, who is credited in all their games. Many of the Resident Evil titles from this period were developed by Studio 4, with the exception of Resident Evil 0 and the Survivor titles by Studio 3, and Resident Evil Outbreak by Studio 1.

History[]

Until the late 1990s, Capcom game development was handled by three teams dubbed "Planning Rooms" (企画室), with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd rooms led by Tokuro Fujiwara, Takashi Nishiyama and Yoshiki Okamoto, respectively. The Studio was founded in 1999 as one of a number of semi-autonomous development studios.

The first projects to be developed by Studio 4 were Hideki Kamiya's BIOHAZARD 4 and Shu Takumi's Dino Crisis 2. Not long after, the considerable differences in BIOHAZARD 4's gameplay style got the attention of Mikami, who persuaded the team that it should be a new IP, being retitled Devil May Cry and its plot altered to remove references to the Resident Evil franchise. The first new development of the millennium was Shu Takumi's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which entered production in mid-2000 six month's after Dino Crisis 2's release after persuasion with Mikami, who considered the premise to be ridiculous.

In 2001, Studio 4's development changed significantly at a press conference in which Mikami offered the studio's support for Nintendo's GameCube and announced the Capcom Five deal that would result in four AAA-rated Studio 4 titles being released first on the GameCube, with PlayStation 2 ports projected to be a year later. The deal consisted of Dead Phoenix, a 3D shoot-'em-up; Killer7, an action-adventure game co-developed with Grasshopper; P.N.03, a sci-fi third-person shooter, and a new Resident Evil title: biohazard4. Of these Mikami directed Viewtiful Joe and P.N.03, with biohazard4 going to Hiroshi Shibata, with writing by Noboru Sugimura and Yasuhisa Kawamura. Along with Capcom Five, Mikami further announced his intention to make all numbered Resident Evil titles permanent Nintendo exclusives, announcing biohazard, a remake of 1996's BIOHAZARD as well as an overhaul in the franchise titling, with the change from upper- to lowercase signifing the change in era. In a follow-up interview with Mikami and Studio 3's Production Manager Tatsuya Minami, it was confirmed that the unreleased Nintendo 64 title BIOHAZARD 0 would also be re-developed as the GameCube exclusive biohazard 0.

Problems began to emerge in Studio 4 after the exclusivity announcement. biohazard; Viewtiful Joe and P.N.03 all sold less than expected at their 2002 and early 2003 releases. Dead Phoenix suffered unknown setbacks and was cancelled after E3 2003. Capcom also failed to make profit with Studio 4's only non-Nintendo game, the Xbox-exclusive Dino Crisis 3. biohazard4, meanwhile, was undergoing repeated changes, which Mikami had already criticised in a 2002 interview as being almost daily. Development changed rapidly in early 2003 following Sugimura's departure from the project, with Kawamura scrapping the plot with the intention of creating a more surreal story that would allow the franchise to compete with Konami's horror franchise, Silent Hill. It was discovered after E3 that the GameCube was incapable of playing the game to Kawamura's memory-taxing ideas, and development started again with a more traditional setting in late 2003 without a writer. At this point Mikami took over production, replacing Shibata with himself as director and assuming writing credit. Believing the low sales of biohazard to be due to the franchise being seen as dull and repetitive by fans, rather than the PlayStation 2's dominance in the market, Mikami replaced the game with more action-heavy gameplay concepts to bring in new fans.

In Spring 2004, Capcom opened up Clover Studios as a development studio consisting of the more experienced developers, which was to conceive of new IPs. Roughly half of Studio 4's developers were transferred to this studio,[1] including Mikami himself. Following the release of biohazard4 and Killer7, Production Studio 4 was closed to allow Capcom to alter its handling of development teams.

Gameography[]

Game Producer Director Release date
Dino Crisis 2 Shu Takumi 2000/09
fushigi keiji (ふしぎ刑事) 2000/10
Devil May Cry Hideki Kamiya 2001/08
Phoenix Wright 2001/10
Granbo 2001/12
Black Black buragura 2002/02
Resident Evil Shinji Mikami Shinji Mikami 2002/03
Steel Battalion Atsushi Inaba Hifumi Kono 2002/09
Phoenix Wright 2 2002/10
P.N.03 Hiroyuki Kobayashi Shinji Mikami 2003/03
Dino Crisis 3 Hiroyuki Kobayashi 2003/06
Viewtiful Joe 2003/06
Dead Phoenix Cancelled
Ace Attorney 3 2004/01
Meiwaku Seijin Panic Maker 2004/08
Resident Evil 4 Shinji Mikami Shinji Mikami 2005/01

Sources[]

External links[]

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