In 2006, a lot of industry pundits and consumers may have slept on Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. Sure, the game was playable at E3 and it was quite attractive, but Dead Rising was turning far more heads. Many thought the game offered little that hadn't been done before, and besides, the game didn't release until what turned out to be next year.

If most people had modest expectations for Lost Planet, however, Capcom certainly didn't. They promoted the game like a triple-A title and benefited from its protracted development time. In the end, they produced a genuine hit, one which served as further validation of their Western-focused development plans.

We chatted with Christian Svensson, Senior Director of Strategic Planning and Research at Capcom, and talked at length about Lost Planet's success.

According to the NPD, Lost Planetwas the best selling title overall for the month of January in the U.S. Capcom anticipated this demand (helped by the fact that it was one of few major console game releases during the month) and shipped over a million copies worldwide. Together, the regular and Collector's Editions sold 409,000 units and produced over $25.2 million in retail sales.

"When we first forecast the title more than a year ago, the numbers were a little conservative owing to the unknowns of the Xbox 360 marketplace," said Svensson. "As we moved closer and closer to release -- and at E3 in particular, where we released the first demo -- we became a lot more confident in the title and the numbers went up accordingly. So with respect to the original forecast, yes, we've well exceeded those figures, but the actual performance is right in line with what we were expecting for the U.S. with our more recent forecast."

He continued, comparing Lost Planet's sales to Dead Rising, Capcom's other main 360 release: "Dead Rising had an incredible first week that was higher than Lost Planet's. That's in part due to the fact that we'd shifted it from June to August, which gave a bit more time for us to generate more buzz with marketing activity and more time for pre-orders to build up. It really helped that we had a good competitive window to release where there was a void in what some folks might consider 'titles of significance.'

"However, Lost Planet seems to have much longer legs and is tracking above Dead Rising's performance at this point. I won't get into how much above, but to put things in perspective, within approximately five weeks, consumer and retail demand has pushed Lost Planet's current sell to numbers above Dead Rising's life-to-date sell-in numbers. Dead Rising continues to sell very, very well. I'm sure you can see the NPD figures as well as anyone else in the industry. Lost Planet is selling even better and its tail is going to be far longer given the community-driven nature of the product and some of the upcoming activities we have yet to announce."

No doubt one of the main selling points of Lost Planet was the truly gorgeous scenery. Everything, from the snowy landscape, to the movements of the characters to the kick-ass action of the mecha suits looks thoroughly "next gen." Svensson agreed, saying, "The most obvious [selling point] is that graphically, it's stunning. It's not that Lost Planet is just throwing just tons and tons of polygons around. It's the subtlety that comes from motion blur, generous particle use and other post processing effects. I suspect that some time about two years ago, Takeuchi-san sat in a room with the team and demanded that this game have the most incredible explosions ever made as one of the core elements of the game... and they've succeeded. Things blow up real good-like. I'd also point out that character animation is also a significant step forward in quality from what would have been able to be achieved on prior platforms."

What's more amazing than the graphical achievements are the online features of Lost Planet. Capcom is a well known, highly regarded publisher and developer of games, but it is still fairly new to online shooter titles of this sort. Yet the company has hit the ground running, already promising an update to rebalance the game and additional map packs to keep Lost Planet fresh.