A healthy profit is tying in with a greater focus on esports in the future.

Capcom’s fiscal year ended on March 31st, 2018, and the company is doing well. The Japanese game developer cites an overall profit increase of 8.4 percent in comparison to last year, reaching about 94 million yen (compared to 87 million last year). Among the good video game sales, Capcom points to the growth of esports as one of the reasons.

Capcom’s flagship esports title is, of course, Street Fighter V. “This is driven by games coming to be recognized as a new sport, following esports’ adoption as an official event at the 2022 Asian Games,” the report states. The developer wants to capitalize on this further by fully shaping their esports strategy with a new Capcom Esports Club in Japan. They’re dubbing 2018 as “esports year one” for the company, so expect an even greater focus on esports in the coming years.

The report briefly mentions the other recent fighting game title from Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, which isn’t part of the Capcom Cup, nor saw a return of its “Battle for the Stones” circuit from last year. It didn’t mention specific numbers for the game, saying that sales (which were targeting the US and European markets) were “soft” around the world. Other than that, the company owes a lot of its current profits to Monster Hunter: World, which has been very successful around the globe, reaching 7.5 million copies sold.

Overall, Capcom’s strongest market right now is home consoles.

Source: Capcom