Producer admits inundating the market has tarnished the franchise
Capcom released “too many” Resident Evil games in the last two years, which have hurt, rather than help the franchise, admits Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata.
The Japanese publisher has released five Resident Evil titles in the last two years, and the response to the latest title in its main series, Resident Evil 6, was mixed.
“I think certainly looking at the last year or two, there probably were a few too many,” said Kawata, when asked by VideoGamer.com whether he felt the publisher had crowded the market with Resident Evil titles.
Resident Evil 6 sold 4.8 million copies last year. In its quarterly report, released today, the publisher acknowledged that the game had failed to meet its desired expectations.
Kawata added: “I think we learned last year that putting on a lot of titles would not necessarily win over gamers. At the same time, I don’t think we should just stagger them out artificially because that's the solution to the problem we have.
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“We should always start by asking how do we make the games better. And if the solution to making the games better is to have a more staggered release than we’ve had recently then that's something we'll do. But we’ll do it for that reason and not just for flipping what we've done already.”
Capcom has a port of 3DS title Revelations on the way for Xbox 360 and PS3 this spring.
And, yet, annual rehashes are still the publishers' preferred model. Pubs need to be more willing to experiment with new & unproven IPs, rather than producing iteration-after-iteration on the same tried & true formulas. Consumers get burned out on playing rehashes just as much as devs get burned out on making them.
I've got very little time to play these days, so when I do have some time, I don't want to play the "same ol'". I now spend my money on varied and new experiences, across a multitude of platforms, and console is getting less and less of it of late. There are a few notable exceptions though, such as Journey, Quantum Conundrum, and Retro City Rampage.
