How Capcom Set the Stage for the Modern Resident Evil Era
A look how Capcom responded to the fallout of Resident Evil 6 and settled on the direction of Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2 remake
The Post-Resident Evil 6 Crisis
Spring 2017. Resident Evil 7 Biohazard was released in January to critical acclaim from fans and critics alike, attaining a strong Metacritic score of 86. Arguably, for the first time since at least late 2012, Capcom’s survival horror franchise felt reinvigorated and respected by the gaming community. Many fans and critics lauded RE7’s return to a smaller, more focused scale of horror, while also becoming a crucial showpiece for the fledgling PlayStation VR. RE7 was also the first title to utilize Capcom’s new proprietary development engine, RE Engine (which stands for “Reach for the Moon,” not Resident Evil) and photogrammetry, both of which Capcom has touted and continues to tout as its most important assets for remaining relevant in the video game industry’s creative and technological arms race.
It’s well-known that Resident Evil 6, released in October 2012, was the cause of the mess than RE7 ultimately ended up cleaning up. Despite Capcom billing RE6 as “the most ambitious, immersive and feature rich title of the series to date… and the dramatic horror experience of the year" in the game’s January 2012 world premiere, to say that the final product undelivered would be a significant understatement. The original Xbox 360 version, which has the most reviews, has a mere 67 on Metacritic, by far the lowest ranked entry of the mainline Resident Evil titles. That’s 29 points below the 2005 version of Resident Evil 4 on GameCube and PlayStation 2. To get an idea of why RE6 was so widely criticized, reading almost any major Western outlet’s review will provide at least a handful of reasons, but the specifics of RE6’s issues are beyond the purview of this writing.
RE6’s questionable quality and inability to gel with audiences led to Capcom largely undershooting its lofty sales target, which was initially a whopping 7 million units, a figure no Capcom game had ever achieved before, before being downgraded to a still-ambitious 6 million. This also proved to be too much, and Capcom ended up downgrading their forecast a second time to just 5 million units. Capcom eventually shipped only 4.5 million in its debut quarter, falling short of all three of their forecasts. To its credit, Capcom was quick to acknowledge RE6’s critical and commercial shortcomings. Reflecting on its financial performance for the 3rd Quarter of the 2012 Fiscal Year (October 1-December 31, 2012, the period when RE6 was released), Capcom offered the following explanation to its shareholders on why the game sold short of its initial sales target:
We are currently analyzing the causes, which involve our internal development operations and sales operations. We have not yet reached a clear conclusion. We believe that global sales of 5 million units are proof that this is a popular title. However, we believe that the new challenges we tackled at the development stage were unable to sufficiently appeal to users. In addition, we believe there was inadequate organizational collaboration across our entire company with regard to marketing, promotions, the creation of plans and other activities.
In the same statement, Capcom vaguely describes their intention to identify the root of the issue:
We will have to examine these results from several perspectives. We will reexamine our internal operating frameworks in order to identify areas that need to be improved concerning development as well as sales and administrative operations.
The video game industry is highly secretive, and the intricate decision-making at companies both large and small are made away from the public eye. Statements like the above, intended to allay the concerns of shareholders, are intentionally vague and generic in order to give the management flexibility to maneuver as necessary.
That being said, reading between the lines, we can identify several key areas where issues were identified:
The RE6 development team seemingly endured unspecified “challenges” during production
Capcom’s sales team marketed the game in a way that may have been at odds with the development team’s creative intentions, showing issues in the company’s internal collaboration
Capcom’s administration (board members, advisors, senior producers, branch managers, etc.) may not have given the amount of oversight necessary to address troubled production or marketing initiatives
Over the past decade, I have communicated with over a dozen people involved directly and indirectly with RE6. They offered insight on the challenges that RE6 faced. Several of them attributed the game’s low quality to the heads of development, including the game’s director and producers, for pushing to create something too bloated and unfocused.
Others blamed pressure from Capcom’s management and sales departments to create a competitor to Western multiplayer online action titles, such as Microsoft’s Gears of War and Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty, which were some of the most popular gaming IP around at the time of RE6’s production (2009 to 2012). One person went as far as to specifically blame Keiji Inafune, who in 2009 famously and incorrectly predicted the downfall of the Japanese game industry for not keeping up with Western rivals, and used his position to influence Capcom’s direction in the late 2000s before ultimately departing in late 2010 to strike out on his own.
All of these perspectives have one thing in common: Capcom was perceived as chasing Western game trends and creating RE6 at a scale it was woefully underprepared to execute on effectively. Capcom equated bigger with better, and through both its design and marketing, RE6 even tried to be something for everyone, a strategy that rarely, if ever works. It certainly didn’t here.
While Capcom hasn’t disowned and continues to sell the game on modern platforms, the latest iteration being a Nintendo Switch port in 2019, Capcom rarely talks about RE6’s production anymore. By comparison, Capcom is much prouder of what they achieved with RE7 and far more transparent about how they arrived at the decision to create the game the way they did. Capcom even allowed for the publication of the Resident Evil 7 Biohazard Document File, effectively an officially curated developer diary on the game’s production that has been released in both Japanese and English. The Document File offers plenty of insight on different struggles Capcom endured during development, specifically focusing on the direction of RE7, and the first-ever implementation of RE Engine, photogrammetry and VR. The book also describes a meeting that took place in January 2014 between Capcom’s CEO, Kenzo Tsujimoto, and Jun Takeuchi, a veteran on the franchise (he notably was Chief Producer for Resident Evil 5). The CEO tells Takeuchi that “RE’s been having some trouble,” before handing Takeuchi the reigns for RE7.
Still then, the Document File only glosses over the impact of RE6 briefly, on page 20:
At the time, development of the latest Resident Evil was in a tough spot. Resident Evil 6 sold 6.7 million copies, satisfying many gamers with its appealing characters and strong action elements. However, with the increasing focus on action, the horror elements conversely decreased. Longtime fans had mixed opinions.
Well, that’s certainly an optimistic and selective way of explaining things. Naturally, one might wonder what else transpired between October 2012 and January 2014, a roughly 15-month period, that led to the eventual reboot of RE7. Fifteen months is actually an eternity in game production; back in the ‘80s, Capcom itself could produce two, perhaps three games in that timeframe with a single team. To spend at least that much time coming up with a direction, and one that the Document File even implies that may have not worked out if things had gone differently, is a sign that Capcom simply had no confidence on where to take RE after RE6.
As I mentioned above, over the years I’ve been able to speak with people involved directly and indirectly with the production of RE. Below, I present some of the anecdotes I’ve heard that eventually led to Capcom’s post-RE6 direction. It is not necessarily intended to be exhaustive, and different anecdotes have different levels of reliability. The main takeaway here to illustrate the multi-year challenge Capcom faced in the wake of RE6’s release.
Soul Searching
To understand Capcom’s dilemma between October 2012 and January 2014, I spoke with one ex-Capcom employee who requested anonymity for this piece. “After RE6 came out, the company had to go soul searching to find out where to take the series next. Capcom just wasn’t sure where they needed to go in order to keep the IP relevant,” the ex-employee explained.
The person offered some examples of ideas and prototypes that were floated. “One of their ideas for Resident Evil 7 was to make a new game that stuck closely to Resident Evil 4, but instead of Spain, this time it would be set in Portugal,” the ex-employee said, while laughing mildly. “The idea was that everyone loved RE4, so they thought about going back in that direction.”
The same ex-employee and others also described a proposal in which RE7 would be a multiplayer title with new protagonists, apparently U.S. government agents or military soldiers, deployed to a city experiencing a zombie outbreak. Players would be guided over comms by series veterans Leon S. Kennedy and Sherry Birkin.
Another person described an internal competition between the so-called “Resident Evil 6 faction” and “Resident Evil Revelations faction” at Capcom, that each crafted their own competing proposals in order to win the right to produce the next Resident Evil title.
In the official “Making of Part One: Beginning Hours” video documenting the development of RE7, Capcom Producer Masachika Kawata, said, “Back in 2013, I was involved in planning an earlier version of Resident Evil 7… We were still developing the concept with the same kind of mindset [that we had] after Resident Evil 6, but it wasn’t really coming together.” It’s possible, but not confirmed, that Kawata’s idea was one of the above proposals.
Many more ideas were floated over the course of 2013 within Capcom formally and informally. Ultimately, none of these made it to fruition. When Takeuchi assumed leadership of the project in January 2014, he decided to focus on pure survival horror, the farthest from RE6 that he could possibly go.
Battle of Factions: Resident Evil Revelations vs Resident Evil 6
2012 was intended to be a milestone year for the RE franchise. Capcom deliberately planned for the release of three distinct games during that year, with the big, boisterous RE6 capping it off at the end. The other two games were Resident Evil Revelations for the handheld Nintendo 3DS and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, which was a multiplayer shooter developed by the now-defunct Slant Six Games, known for Sony’s SOCOM titles.
The release of three very distinct RE titles in a short period, while not completely unprecedented in franchise history, was a deliberate show of confidence by Capcom in the ability of the RE brand to appeal to different audiences on multiple platforms. Whether you were a handheld gamer in Japan, an online multiplayer enthusiast in the U.S. or a European fan invested in the long-running RE lore, Capcom thought they had something for all of you.
Unfortunately for Capcom, RE6 wasn’t even the worst ranked RE of 2012. That dubious distinction goes to ORC, with a 52 Metacritic score on both PS3 and Xbox 360. On the other hand, Revelations had the best reception of the three, achieving a respectable 82 on Metacritic.
Despite being a solid title offering a full RE experience on a handheld system, Revelations ultimately did not sell as much as Capcom hoped it would. The game sold solidly in Japan, where the Nintendo 3DS was a strong seller (thanks in part to Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise also appearing on 3DS), but not well enough in the West, where the 3DS struggled for its entire lifecycle due to competition from smart phones and Western gamers showing a greater interest in home consoles.
As always, Capcom planned ahead; even before the release of the 3DS version, the company decided to port Revelations to home platforms, most notably Nintendo’s upcoming Nintendo Wii U, as well as PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Capcom announced this port in January 2013 (it was leaked earlier in November 2012 by the predecessor of GRAC, the Korean equivalent to the ESRB), and released it in May, just shy of 18-months after the 3DS original. While the console ports didn’t score quite as well critically as the 3DS release, many fans and critics agreed that Revelations was a respectable product, and ultimately a better indicator of the direction RE could go versus RE6 or ORC.
Takeuchi certainly thought so, as well. After assuming ownership of RE7, Takeuchi’s first decision was to instill Koshi Nakanishi, who worked on RE5 and directed Revelations, as Director. With Takeuchi’s seniority, selecting Nakanishi was a crucial vote of confidence, not unlike how Tokuro Fujiwara, who was Capcom’s most senior console games producer in the ‘80s and ‘90s, chose Shinji Mikami to direct the original RE back in the mid-‘90s.
Another key team pick was Kawata as Producer of RE7; he previously was Producer for RE5 and Revelations (as well as ORC, but in a smaller capacity).
Meanwhile, none of RE6’s Producers or Director were involved in RE7. (Instead, the Producer for RE6, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, went on to produce other RE titles, most notably Resident Evil HD Remaster and the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2. RE6 Director Eiichiro Sasaki has no other known titles to his name following RE6.)
Hedging Bets: Capcom Explores Alternatives to RE7
As of April 2023, RE7 is the best selling single RE title. Both RE5 and the original RE4 have sold more when counting their various multiplatform re-releases, but they’ve also been out longer, and it’s only a matter of time before RE7 outsells them combined anyway.
Yet, going into RE7’s January 2017 launch, Capcom wasn’t actually sure they had made the right decision. Would the pivot to slow, methodical first-person horror with a new faceless protagonist be a true hit with fans and justify Capcom’s investment in the RE Engine? The positive reaction to RE7’s announcement at E3 2016, coupled with the popularity of the Beginning Hour demo made available immediately after the announcement, hinted that Capcom had a hit on their hands, but there was no way for Capcom to really know for sure until it came out.
By 2016, RE was still Capcom’s most popular and important franchise, despite having kept a relatively lower profile since RE6’s release. Monster Hunter notably grew at this time, especially outside Japan, but Monster Hunter: World, which eventually elevated the franchise to the forefront globally, was still in development, while other major IP like Devil May Cry and Mega Man were years away from their eventual revivals. Much of both RE and Capcom’s future rested on RE7; the company was bold to take a significant risk, but given how much longer and costlier game production had become in the 21st century, Capcom needed a Plan B that they could follow up with soon after in case RE7 wasn’t the hit they were expecting it to be.
Since at least 1998, Capcom has consistently maintained multiple production pipelines for the RE franchise, and this was also the case after RE6. While RE7 was Capcom’s main focus, it was far from Capcom’s only RE product in development. Mostly notably, Capcom decided to look back at past RE titles to revive, choosing to go back to the very beginning with Resident Evil HD Remaster for PlayStation and Xbox consoles, plus PC. The decision to bring back the 2002 RE remake was interesting for several reasons: while it was one of the most highly rated RE games, RE remake’s the pre-rendered fixed camera angles and tank controls were already thought to be antiquated nearly a decade prior, when RE4 came and flipped the RE formula on its head. Insiders at Capcom also mentioned to me that the porting process would involve more effort than usual because Capcom lost the source code years prior. At this point, the game was exclusive to Nintendo GameCube and Wii as well, so this port would mark the first time the remake appeared outside of Nintendo platforms. Capcom assigned RE6’s Hirabayashi as the Producer of REHD.
REHD released in November 2014 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January 2015. The game was unexpectedly a huge success. With non-Nintendo gamers experiencing the remake for the first time, the remake’s old school design did not deter gamers from experiencing its spooky atmosphere, intriguing puzzles and back-to-the basics survival horror gameplay. REHD even broke PlayStation Store sales records at the time of its release. This was partly thanks to being a digital-only game at launch in the West (there was a physical PS3 release only in Japan and Asia), but the impressive performance was still notable. An insider notably once told me, “the surprise success of REHD allowed Hirabayashi to ascend the ranks within Capcom.” The release of RE6 had been a bit of a stumbling block for him, but REHD proved Hirabayashi was still young and capable of being an effective Producer.
Aside from REHD, February 2015 saw the release of Resident Evil Revelations 2 on every active home console at the time except the Wii U; a Sony-developed PlayStation Vita port released in September. Unique among all RE titles, Revelations 2 adopts an episodic campaign style, similar to Telltale’s The Walking Dead game series. Production of the game started in early 2012, not long after the release of the 3DS game. Initially, Capcom wasn’t sure what to name the game; the team, led by RE5 Director Yasuhiro Ampo and ORC Producer Michiteru Okabe, assigned the project the codename “Cliffhanger” during production, a reference to each episode ending with a TV drama-style cliffhanger that would be addressed in the following episode. After the positive reception to the first Revelations title, Capcom eventually settled on calling this game Resident Evil Revelations 2.
Gameplay-wise, Revelations 2 offered a middle-ground between the heavy action of RE6 and the more measured, but still action-oriented style of RE5. There were also stealth sections that were seemingly influenced by Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us. This middle-ground approach turned out to resonate well with gamers, especially those who were dissatisfied with RE6. During its launch period, Revelations 2 garnered mostly positive feedback. The PS4 version earned a 75 on Metacritic, which while not the best in series history, was a noticeably significant improvement over RE6.
At Tokyo Game Show in 2015, Capcom unexpectedly announced a spin-off title, Umbrella Corps. Notably lacking the “Resident Evil” name in the West (although it kept the “Biohazard” name in Japan and Asia), Umbrella Corps. is a multiplayer tactical shooter devoid of any tangible plot. According to an insider, Umbrella Corps. was greenlit as an experimental title assigned to young developers at Capcom, with the aim of them learning how to develop on Havok’s Unity engine. With a tiny budget, very little marketing and no true story to speak of, the game earned an abysmal 38 Metacritic upon its release in June 2016 for PS4 and PC. Capcom always considered Umbrella Corps. a minor title that would have no impact on the future of the franchise in the event it sold poorly (which it ultimately did).
We Do It! Capcom Greenlights Resident Evil 2 Remake
As Capcom made progress on RE7 during 2015, their secondary production pipeline (mainly the creative team that worked on Revelations 2) needed to decide on their next project. At another team, a remaster of Resident Evil 0 was in production and slated for release in January 2016. Capcom also was readying simple remasters of RE4, RE5 and RE6 for the PS4 and Xbox One, which, along with RE0HD, were intended to celebrate the franchise’s monumental 20th Anniversary in 2016.
Revelations 2 proved that the over-the-shoulder formula was still popular with the RE community, while REHD demonstrated that there was still plenty of interest in classic exploration-focused survival horror. While RE7 was already going in the direction of the latter, the decision to make it first-person risked alienating existing RE fans, especially those in Japan, a territory where first-person games aren’t too popular. Previous first-person RE endeavors were a mixed bag of spinoffs like Resident Evil Survivor and the two Wii Chronicles titles, which added a little baggage to the idea of a mainline title adopting the style.
Rather than develop another spinoff such as a Revelations 3, Capcom ultimately settled on a product that fans had long wanted since 2002.
On August 12, 2015, after weeks of soliciting fan interest on social media regarding a potential remake of RE2, Capcom uploaded a video titled “Special Message from Producer “H”” (“H” is Hirabayashi’s nickname). This is where Hirabayashi, in iconic fashion, announced the development of RE2 remake by removing his unbuttoned jacket to unveil a custom-made shirt with the English words “WE DO IT!” embossed on it.
The video was certainly a passionate, if unusual way to announce a greenlit project that wouldn’t be out for at least a few years. Capcom had actually adopted a policy of announcing RE games within 12 to 18 months of release, rather than years before as was the case for both RE4 and RE5. According to insiders, Capcom Japan was eager to let the RE community know that there were things to look forward to with the IP, and that this new RE2, a remake of one of the most beloved entries in the series, would excite fans. Indeed, RE7 had not yet been announced at this point, so by August 2015, RE was nearing three years since RE6, with no official word on what the next mainline RE would be like.
The decision to finally remake RE2 in this specific manner was three-fold:
REHD sold extremely well, with many buyers exploring the series’ early timeline for the first time. The original RE2 was only playable on PS3, and it was arguably way too old to be accepted by modern audiences.
Capcom wanted to keep the over-the-shoulder perspective as an alternative to first-person following the success of Revelations and Revelations 2.
Capcom wanted to create something more substantial than a spinoff, with the same prestige as a mainline title. A remake of RE2, a beloved title in its own regard, would have iconic characters like Leon, Claire and Ada, as opposed to the new and unproven cast of RE7.
By the mid-2010s, RE games were requiring an average of three years to develop and release. By 2015, RE7 was already well-underway, allowing Capcom’s teams to become acquainted with RE Engine. Capcom’s ideal scenario was for development of the RE2 remake to progress smoothly and allow for a release sometime in 2018, a year or so after RE7.
In a somewhat ironic twist, RE7’s development ended up progressing smoothly, while RE2 remake would require more time than Capcom initially anticipated, resulting in a January 2019 release for the latter title (and closer to Devil May Cry 5 than Capcom planned).
Capcom was fortunate that RE7 was a success, ultimately negating the need for RE2 to overcompensate later on. Capcom’s efforts allowed it to simultaneously have two highly viable and respected gameplay styles, first-person and third-person, contributing to the explosive growth of RE since 2017.
As of April 2023, RE7 has sold a whopping 12 million copies; RE2 remake is not far behind at 11.9 million. It’s incredibly rare for a major game IP to have two active and extremely popular styles at the same time; for me, only Nintendo’s Super Mario franchise comes to mind with viable 2D and 3D styles.
Wrapping Up
As a reader, you may have thought this first issue of Complete Global Saturation was overly long and saturated (pun intended) with different bits of history covering a seven-year period. The main takeaway is that Resident Evil, with 142 million sold as of April 2023, enjoys a strong position as a gaming franchise in 2023 thanks to Capcom willingly examining its past mistakes and making crucial decisions whose implications wouldn’t be known for years.
While some might think Capcom simply got lucky, their decision makers have racked up an impressive resume that extends beyond just RE: most notable here is Monster Hunter. Since the release of World in 2018, MH has actually surpassed RE in terms of units sold per entry, with World being Capcom’s first 20-million seller and its highest performer ever; another title, Monster Hunter Rise, is in second place, while RE7 and RE2 remake sit at third and fourth place, respectively.
Who knows when or if RE will ever again experience a crisis like the one induced by RE6 back in October 2012. I find the chances to be unlikely myself because Capcom is a more measured company today than they were over a decade ago. If RE is going to last another 10, 20 or 30 years, it will be because of the excellent moves they made in the mid-2010s that made RE one of the biggest gaming franchises in history.