Reboots of Dino Crisis and Onimusha seem at least a long way off – but the cult action franchises have not been forgotten, Capcom has said.

Samurai action series Onimusha is "percolating" within Capcom, while a lack of ideas is hampering a possible Dino Crisis rebirth.

"Onimusha is tricky in particular given how Japanese-focused the franchise has been," Capcom VP of Strategic Planning and Business Development Christian Svensson told IGN.

"When you look at the timing and sales trend of how Onimusha has gone each outing – I won't give you the exact numbers, but let's just say every outing subsequently has been about 60 per cent of the prior - the brand doesn't right now have quite the resilience that you might think.

"While Onimusha 1 and Onimusha 2 are among our more successful titles, Onimusha 3 and Onimusha Dawn of Dreams, not so much," he added.

Indeed. Eurogamer awarded Dawn of Dreams 6/10 in 2006.

"For the time being I think it's in percolate mode, that is to say, it's not forgotten internally, there are discussions that go on, but I don't think anyone has come up with the 'that's it' idea of how to get the game back up to three or four million units," Svensson admitted.

"You may see some things of the brand pop up in the future, I can't say what, but there are certainly discussions about it."

And what of Resident Evil-style dinosaur game Dino Crisis? The last major Dino Crisis game was the third in the series, which released on the original Xbox in 2003. Eurogamer gave it 3/10.

"Dino Crisis 3 I think is where it went off the rails if I recall. Dino Crisis' success really was an out cropping of Resident Evil 1 and 2," Svensson said.

"There are discussions, Dino Crisis comes up from time to time, but there isn't any burning desire from R&D or the business side to light that franchise back up again.

"Until there's an internal champion with something incredible, things just sort of sit there.

"Someone internally may cook up an idea, but we haven't seen the fire from R&D yet and no one's come up with the idea yet."