Resident Evil 7 just launched earlier this week and gamers are quickly taking to the first-person survival-horror story. However, the latest installment to the Resident Evil franchise has gone back to its routes when compared to the previously released Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 installments. According to one producer behind Resident Evil 7, this change will not affect sales for Capcom.
Speaking to Games Industry, Resident Evil 7 producer, Masachika Kawata, spoke of why the development team at Capcom decided to go back to their original routes. For the past couple installments within the Resident Evil franchise, gamers were met with an over-the-top action horror story. It’s because of these extremes that Capcom offered in the past two installments that the developers were left to go back towards their routes.
”In particular the last game. Resident Evil 6, released in 2012, sold well but received a kicking from the consumer press. The game was bloated and more an action blockbuster than a horror game. However, although critics – and die-hard fans – were disappointed by the direction the series had been heading in, the franchise’s popularity had never been higher. Resident Evil 6 is the second most successful game Capcom has ever released, just behind the equally action-orientated Resident Evil 5.”
Despite selling well, Capcom apparently didn’t have anywhere else to go and was forced to shift back towards a creepy survival-horror tone.
“From a business perspective, Resident Evil 6 was a success. But we had pushed that style of Resident Evil gameplay, with the big storyline and the hero characters, pretty much as far as we could. It was a blockbuster scale of game. That almost left us with no choice but to change the series in order to keep it alive, because where do you go after that size and scale of game?”
The focus went on towards marketing and looking back at previous installments of the Resident Evil franchise, the initial few installments sold well at the time, but now with Capcom improving their ability to market a game, Resident Evil 7 will sell just fine despite not having the action moments we saw in the past.
“Certainly if you compare the sales of Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3 as a unit and compare it to Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 the sales were a lot higher on the more recent titles. But that’s not just because of the types of content, we have got better at selling our games. The market has got bigger as well. So just because we are going back to horror, I don’t expect we will see a drop to historical levels. The whole company is behind this title and the horror approach, and I’m confident that we are going to do well with this one.”
