The Future of Star Force

I doubt Star Force is dead for good, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a new title for a while. The series just isn't catching on and even in Japan the Star Force Anime was cut short mid-season and then canceled. The game is selling alright, but not as well as any of the other series and I doubt Capcom is going to waste resources on a moderate selling series when they could put their efforts to a block buster selling series.

I'm pretty sure we'll see Geo again down the line, and I do think someone at Capcom has a tender spot for the character. He's reappeared in Operation Shooting Star, but that game is a Battle Network game, plays with a Battle Network engine and stars the Battle Network cast. Geo's appearance is more like a guest star in a long running tv series, and unfortunately from the looks of things the content involving Star Force characters is a small fraction of the entire game. Being as Operation Shooting Star is mostly a port though Geo's appearance at all might be a good sign for the series.

Capcom has hinted that if Operation Shooting Star does well, they'll probably port the rest of the Battle Network series over to the DS. As has already been noted by a guest poster on Protodude's blog, this strategy is very familiar as Capcom tried something similar with the Ace Attorney series. The first Ace Attorney game, Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney, was a port of the original game for Game Boy Advance and it contained a new case to entice the owners of the original game to pick this one up as well. Operation Shooting Star of course features the new content with Geo.

When the next games in the Ace Attorney series were ported over however, they didn't feature any new content. If Operation Shooting Star follows the same path, we may not see Geo for a while. There has even been hints that the Battle Network series may actually be revived and continue on with Lan's son Patch becoming the main protagonist, but that's quite a ways away and depends on the success of the series greatly, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

In either case, Operation Shooting Star's potential financial success will affect the potential for a Star Force 4 quite a bit. If the game does well, Capcom will probably consider another Star Force at some point, but they'll want to pump out more Battle Network games first and probably put Star Force on the back burner. If the game bombs, Capcom won't release more Battle Network games, but they probably won't release any more Star Force games either. They might turn their focus back to the other Mega Man series or... ugh... make a new series. I could be wrong, but I think Star Force 3 is going to be the last we've seen of the actual Star Force series for a long time.