Dusk Golem seems to have a positive follow up to rumors about Resident Evil 9 being delayed.
A week ago, they shared their assessment that Capcom was planning to delay the game internally, meaning they had no intention of telling the public, but they were still going to keep working on it. Dusk Golem also claimed that Capcom has another Resident Evil title that’s not in the main series, and that they may reveal that instead.
So here’s what Dusk Golem tweeted out today:
“I have good news/rumors to deliver on Resident Evil 9. The possible delay I had heard murmurs about can be pushed aside. RE9 should be revealed pretty soon & release next year. If what I heard previously holds true, should be in January. It’ll have had about 7 years in dev.
January 2025 I hadn’t heard now, just been a date I’d heard previously they probably are still aiming for, but never know in game dev.
I won’t leak/rumor any other details of the game, just let Capcom do their thing & let them surprise people.
Just to explain something, RE9 started early dev in early 2018 as a possible RE8. Village has started dev as RE8, then became a spin-off title, then ultimately became RE8 again. This game became RE9 ultimately, & yes, RE8 & RE9 were in dev at the same time.
RE games are usually greenlit in batches & planned out for a few years to keep the series “near annual”. As I’ve said a few times before, there was this funny period in 2018 that RE:2, RE:3, RE:4, RE8 & RE9 were all in dev at the same time.
There’s something kinda’ similar that happened recently as another batch of RE games were greenlit in early 2023. RE9 has the biggest budget & longest dev time of any RE game to date, & I’ve described previously as “ambitious”. None of this last part is new, it’s stuff I’ve been reiterating for years.”
So we’ll learn about Resident Evil 9 itself when we see it, but Dusk Golem’s new information is an interesting look at Capcom’s recent moves in game development. Resident Evil is likely their most successful franchise, their Final Fantasy or Call of Duty.
It absolutely makes sense that Capcom would have grandiose plans on how to make their Resident Evil games, but it’s surprising that their planning was intended to get us one Resident Evil game a year. As we have seen, mostly Western devs like EA or Ubisoft have been able to pull that off successfully, but doing so also leads to annual games that may make tons of revenue, but are truthfully not as good as Resident Evil games.
So maybe it’s better this way, if Capcom’s ‘delays’ turn out to be choices to make sure we get future Resident Evil games that exceed expectations.