That's a Dualshockers article you got that quote from, right? I've read the original Sankei piece and the corresponding Dualshockers article is lacking some serious context in terms of what the overall article is actually discussing, which is not exactly a potential Resident Evil 7 per se. It's mentioned as a possibility for E3 towards the end, yes, but not in the "we heard a guy who said it was gonna be so" sense so much as "we wouldn't be surprised if it was there." The actual article itself is actually a pretty interesting read that discusses the state of Capcom and how a new Resident Evil is potentially going to be their way of getting out of a recent rut of losses with mobile and other non-Monster Hunter ventures. I'm going to translate the last two sections of the piece since they're most pertinent and because I'm really pissed that an outlet like Dualshockers didn't bother to use anything else other than Google. HERE WE GO:
What made Capcom go with the Xbox One over the PS4 for a big retail game?
Capcom's problems aren't limited to its prospects with smartphone games, however. They were also late to start developing a major game for the PlayStation 4, which has been a huge hit so far in Western countries and has a lot of passionate gamers supporting it.
As of this writing, the only thing Capcom has on the table for the PS4 is a downloadable title, Deep Down, with nothing bigger in the pipeline that could satiate fan expectations. What's more, Deep Down, which doesn't have a set release date, is also only going to be a free-to-play game.
Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto asserted that "Free to play games are the norm for smartphones, but there are instances where they've also succeeded on consoles, so we see it as a challenge worth taking." The company has faith that it'll put out a reputable game, but its monetization scheme could ultimately make or break it in the eyes of its fans.
Meanwhile, on the Xbox One, the PS4's rival console made by Microsoft, Capcom has already put out a million-selling hit, but that console won't be coming to Japan until September. This has left Japanese gamers feeling left out in the cold while they're left waiting for a big new console game to play of their own. On top of that, sales of the Xbox One hardware are trailing behind that of the PS4, putting Capcom in a bind; even if it made a tactical error in focusing on developing for the Xbox One, they're too fargone to take it back at this stage.
Could Capcom be planning something for E3 in June?
With Capcom late to the smartphone game development scene and dissatisfaction surrounding its current PS4 output, one could argue that the developer has seen better days. Nevertheless, plans are being put into action to turn the situation around.
On the smartphone front, for instance, Capcom up until now developed them at both its main headquarters in Osaka as well as its branch office in Tokyo. But from this April onwards, those efforts will be consolidated as part of the company's online PC game development team in Tokyo. With monetization of online PC games greatly resembling those of smartphone games, Capcom hopes that the move will yield a lot of synergized efforts going forward.
And then there's the matter of E3. Set for June, the publisher plans to show off a major game of some sort for the PS4. Fans are getting increasingly hyped up for the event, as they take it to mean that a new Resident Evil game is on the horizon. Resident Evil 6, the last game in the series, sold over 5.6 million units and it's expected that a potential 7 would sell equally as well if such a thing were to come out.
For the time being, Capcom has Monster Hunter 4G set to arrive in stores this fall as a revamped version of Monster Hunter 4, but an analyst familiar with the game industry expressed restraint about its potential success, stating "I feel confident in saying that Monster Hunter is going to prove to be less and less of a golden egg compared to its highs for the 2007-2008 fiscal year [This is when the portable iterations of Monster Hunter 2 were running amok on Japanese sales charts]. Obviously they need to make a splash on smartphones, but they also need something else that's big as a traditional game or else Capcom could find itself left behind by speedier Western game developers." To say the least, Capcom is definitely at a crossroads at this stage.
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