Capcom Five
The "Capcom Five" is the name given to a group of five games made by Capcom that were originally intended to be released only for the Nintendo GameCube.
It was a cause of unfathomable disappointment for Nintendo fans in the sixth console generation. These were five Capcom games announced to be exclusive to the GameCube in 2003 and the cause of much hope that finally there would be some more quality mature-rated titles that would shatter the GameCube's kiddy image and boost console sales:
- Viewtiful Joe
- Dead Phoenix (was canceled and thus never released)
- Killer7
- P.N.03 (the only GameCube exclusive title)
- mh:awesomegames:Resident Evil 4
Background
Most of these games did not remain exclusive, as Capcom seemingly did not actually sign any kind of exclusivity deal with Nintendo. The cracks in the idea of exclusivity started to form when the first of the Five, the rather bizarre P.N.03, sold far below expectations and was not liked by critics. Capcom, no doubt comparing this to the runaway success of Devil May Cry on PS2 two years earlier, took the game's failure as indicative of the failure of the Gamecube, which was struggling as a system due to a lack of third-party support at the time and being absolutely trounced by the PS2, which would go on to become the best-selling console in history. As a result, Capcom cancelled Dead Phoenix entirely and started making arrangements to port the remaining games to the PS2.
Later Resident Evil 4 and Viewtiful Joe were ported to the PS2 after a brief period of exclusivity on the GCN. Since the Gamecube's hardware was more powerful than the PS2's, they were downgraded in graphical quality: most obviously, the PS2 version of Resident Evil 4 had to remove the atmospheric dynamic lighting effects and real-time cutscenes (which was used as a basis for the 2007 PC Release). Killer7 saw simultaneous release on the GCN, PS2, and later on Steam 13 years after the release.
Result
Sony's 100 million+ strong fan base didn't care that they'd be getting games optimized for a different console that would look and sound inferior on PS2, they only cared that they wouldn't have to buy a Gamecube to enjoy those games (or ports of games, rather). To further add salt to the wound for Nintendo supporters, exclusive PS2 content was added to the ports of RE4 and Viewtiful Joe such as Separate Ways (Ada Wong sidestory) for RE4 and Dante for Viewtiful Joe.
The later Wii port of Resident Evil 4 combined the Gamecube graphics with the PS2's additional content: as long as the player does not mind motion controls, this is the definitive version, and was used as the basis of the later PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Steam HD remasters.