The disbanding of Capcom's most recognizable studio isn't as bad as you think.
Gamasutra recently talked to Capcom's Charles Bellfield, who is the company's vice president of marketing in the USA. He engages in a rather large interview, but the most interesting part of it is exactly what happened at Clover Studio.
As it turns out, Clover was something of an anomaly at Capcom. The company doesn't normally partition its development talent into teams, but instead puts them where they are needed for however long they are needed on a project-to-project basis. According to Bellfield, the Clover group was a “separate entity" with a “separate identity." They even had a floor in Capcom's 16-story Osaka headquarters all to themselves.
So why did the studio close? By now, the story is clear. Bellfield sums up what we already know:
"Our games need to at least break even and add value back to our shareholders, so it's impossible to make games that are not profitable over and over again. What actually happened is [Shinji] Mikami-san, [Hideki] Kamiya-san and [Atsushi] Inaba-san chose to leave the company and do something else..."
But here's something that people may have not realized:
“...and the rest of the Clover team was just incorporated back into the rest of Capcom's development talent pool. So in fact, while three individuals left, Clover Studios as a separate entity was merged back into the rest of the Capcom teams and today, still, the talent we had, with the exception of three people, is still remaining at Capcom."
There were about 80 people working under the Clover Studio banner, and although the three that left were pretty good, it takes a lot more than three people to make games as wonderful as Viewtiful Joe or Okami. All of those hands are still working at Capcom, and are no doubt working on something else that's really good.
But what of Kamiya, Inaba and Mikami, the three men who defined Clover Studios? You may have heard that they recently created their own independent development studio, Seeds, and are asking for help to make some "preposterously amazing" games. Considering that Clover made some preposterously amazing games of their own, it looks like Seeds will pick up where Clover left off.
Although the closure of Clover Studio can be considered a great tragedy, it's not because we'll never see games the ones they made again. Capcom still has the core of Clover, and the big three that made Clover Studio what it was are looking to bounce back with creations of their own. Let's all hope that this is one step backward and two steps forward in the grand scheme of things.
