Capcom has several iconic franchises that they own and over the year’s these franchises have received several installments. For instance, Resident Evil is one of their most iconic IPs to date after getting its start on the original PlayStation. Now that we’re on the fourth generation of the PlayStation console lineup, it’s not too surprising to see that the studio is interested in bringing back some of their previous works.
At the current moment, Capcom has seven mainline installments to the Resident Evil franchise and an eighth known as Resident Evil Village coming soon. Still, with all these installments, there was some interest in going back to bring out remakes for their previously released Resident Evil games. We’ve seen this in the original first installment of Resident Evil followed by Resident Evil 2 which was a massive success and its follow up Resident Evil 3.
Resident Evil 3 was the last remake announced and brought out from Capcom and with it came a few changes. While the development team kept up with their RE Engine along with the mechanics that was laid out in Resident Evil 2 remake. Still, there were a few slight changes to the game narrative, but nothing too drastically different to really change all that much of the overall storyline. Likewise, Resident Evil 3 was a much shorter game overall compared to Resident Evil 2 and as a result, players received a linear game rather than having to backtrack too much before moving on to the next main set piece.
With that said, we now know the sales numbers for Resident Evil 3. According to a new report from Capcom, it appears that Resident Evil 3 sold 2.7 million units after its first three months. That’s a pretty large number but when comparing it to the Resident Evil 2 remake that Capcom likely had hoped to match, it falls back quite a bit. In the same time frame, Resident Evil 2 managed to bring out over 4 million sales.
We’re not sure if this is going to cause the development studio to rethink the future of remakes for their franchise or if dialing back expectations is going to be required if we get another remake from Resident Evil. Likewise, there may be some that are finding their love of Resident Evil to be burning out a bit. In the span of just a few short years, we’ve received Resident Evil 7, along with the remakes for Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3.
At any rate, it looks like their main focus right now is progressing the storyline from Resident Evil 7 with this next mainline installment, Resident Evil Village. Would you like to see Capcom go back and deliver additional Resident Evil remakes?