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Clover Studios Closed
Clover Studios, makers of such titles as Okami, God Hand, and Viewtiful Joe, has been closed by Capcom Japan for financial reasons. Gamespot reports on the exact wording of the sad announcement: "Clover Studio Co., Ltd. has met the goal of developing unique and creative original home video game software, however, in view of promoting a business strategy that concentrates management resources on a selected business to enhance the efficiency of the development power of the entire Capcom group, the dissolution of Clover Studios Co., Ltd. has been raised and passed at a Board of Directors' meeting."
To be fair, the Mega Man sequels have often been wildly different - the Battle Network series, for example, are a lot of fun, and not the traditional platformer at all. And as has been pointed out, they've not produced any new Street Fighter stuff in years. Meanwhile, the Resident Evil series has been getting better and better, and Dead Rising, while not a huge departure for the company in that it's still you versus zombies, is nevertheless unique in its approach and an ASSLOAD of fun. Devil May Cry set the new bar for its genre, though the frustrating difficulty of the past iteration really put me off. I played the upcoming Lost Planet at Comicon, and it was extremely promising. And it's hard to argue that the Pheonix Wright games are formulaic.
Rereading that, I come off as a Capcom fanboy, but I'm not saying they shit gold. I just don't think it's really fair to pigeonhole a publisher that's actually been doing pretty good lately.