What Resident Evil: Revelations' Poor Sales Means For Capcom's Biggest Franchise

Resident Evil: Revelations sold well below Capcom's expectations; Bloody Disgusting dives into what that means for the franchise and what Capcom can do -- if anything -- to bring Resident Evil back to its former glory.

[SquareSoft]

Make a game like Dayz, with sexy characters, better graphics, online co-op and expandable story.

[CrossingEden]

Hell to the no....

[Timesplitter14]

Aside from the fact that your expectations are completely unrealistic,

1 - I really don't see Capcom pulling that off. Japanese devs in general are very inexperienced with open-world games, and previous attempts have shown that they don't really "get" it.

2 - Resident Evil is a successful franchise. They don't need to reinvent it completely, they just have to improve on the original horror formula instead of making linear action games like RE6

3 - How the hell would they implement a story in a DayZ-like game?

4 - Sexy characters ruin everything. I don't want my zombie games to look like final fantasy

[muttsurini]

Lol japanese devs are inexperienced in making open-world games?, say that to final fantasy, legend of zelda, the tales series and many more.

[MightyNoX]

@muut : erm, those aren't open world games they are RPGs. Open world is something like Skyrim where you walk from one end of the map to the other without loading times. Zelda SEEMS open world but it's actually a collection of small areas connected together. Transition between them is not seemless.

Also, Final Fantasy? Tales? You really don't know what open world is, do you?

[Ricegum]

Resident Evil 2 HD remake with over the shoulder camera. That's all they can do at this point that will have me interested. They need the magic that was there in the first 3 Resident Evil games.

[DCfan]

They don't get it?? LOL
Someone obviously didn't play Yakuza.

[Inception]

@Timsplitter

Japanese dev inexperienced with open world games? FYI, Shenmue is the 1st game that revolutionize 3D open world. Shenmue introduced day-night cycles, changing weather, and fully voiced npc's who had their own activities, and of course freedom to explore a city without breaking the experience into small area.

With this amazing achievement, even the mighty R* FOLLOW Shenmue by making a big change to GTA series started from GTA III.

@MightyNoX

You contradicted yourself dude. Skyrim is a RPG, Fallout also RPG too. So of course we can put Zelda, Tales, and FF as an open world game.

For loading, i play Assassins Creed and it got loading when i move into some areas. Even GTA III got a couple of loading when i entered into some building.

[Baka-akaB]

"Open world is something like Skyrim where you walk from one end of the map to the other without loading times."

That's mostly lately . Most open world games do charge areas , they only try to do it when needed with usually large ones and/or small indoor stuff .

AS for posts above , LOL . Yeah it might not be their forte , but the japanese industry still led the open world charge with games like Shenmue , Yakuza , Way of the samurai or even Dragon's Dogma and still like Greavity Rush . And it's not an exhaustive list , albeit still limited

Some other titles like Xenoblade ( a totally seamless world even by your standards) , FFXII , even got enough elements to qualify imo .

if the excluding factor is their main genre , or a bigger focus on forced and scripted storytelling , then pretty much all the western games that arent like GTA , Juste cause or Skyrim could be excluded too , especially stuff like Assassin Creed

[MightyNoX]

@Inception :

I guess that's why nature gave us categories and sub-categories as well. RPGs can come in many flavors (open world/action/tactical) and the open world is a genre on itself. Comparing the open world like Skyrim or Far Cry where you might encounter random NPCs to the static overworld map of a traditional RPG should be cause for mockery and laughter.

Fail. Try again.

[Inception]

@MightyNoX

No fail in my side. Skyrim is an RPG and open world game. Fallout also an RPG and open world game.

You better learn some video game history dude. Try again. Thx u and have a nice day.

@Baka2

Yup, that's why we can put Zelda, FF, or Tales as an open world game.

[Skizelli]

They're beating a dead horse at this point. A Resident Evil without Shinji Mikami is like Rock without the Roll. and I say this as one of the biggest RE fans you'll ever meet (raise your hand if you played RE1 so many times that you could finish it without saving). The same can be said about Silent Hill without Team Silent. It makes me sad. These publishers need to stop riding on the coattails of somebody's vision and allow someone else to create their own.

At this point, it's the indie developers who are pushing the genre forward with games like Penumbra, Amnesia, and Outlast.

Here's hoping Mikami can wow us again with The Evil Within.

[gantarat]

Penumbra, Amnesia, and Outlast are good horror game but
gameplay it's about RUN AND HIDE

[Ricegum]

Evil Within looks fantastic, that'll be Resident Evil's replacement for me.

[Skizelli]

@gantarat

This is true. But considering the 'run and gun' nature a lot of these survival horror franchises have now, is 'run and hide' such a bad thing?

@Unreal01

I'm highly looking forward to it myself. The pacing and atmosphere look to be classic Mikami. Can't wait!

[joab777]

It means they should focus on a next gen Dragons Dogma.

[gantarat]

I WANT itsuno MAKE DMC 5 or Remake DMC 3

[Skizelli]

Dragon's Dogma was amazing. Highly underrated. It's just a matter of time before Capcom screws up that IP, though.

[yugovega]

how is "over 1 million" poor sales for a port of a handheld game? and being released after re6 had put a bad taste in everyones mouth, without advertisements as well?

[Pozzle]

It makes me sad that a game selling over 1 million copies is considered a failure nowadays. :(

[Zichu]

It would be if you didnt make a profit from it.

[BitbyDeath]

$40 x 1,000,000 = 40,000,000
Why would a port of a handheld game cost over 40 million dollars to make?

[mhunterjr]

@bitbydeath

That's not how it works. Typically 20% goes to the retailer, 20% to the platform holder, 15% is spent on marketing, 15% pay the developer, and the remaining 30% represents the publishers revenue.

So really your equation should have been .3 x $40 x 1000000 = $12,000,000. That's how much revenue capcom saw from this game. It's very unlikely that they invested less than $12mil into the game. And even if they did, it would be Tiny profit.

[BitbyDeath]

Thanks for the correction but 12 million for a port still sounds really high. Dylan Jobe says he needs a few million to do a full remaster of Warhawk, which should be a much larger job albeit only for one platform.

[darx]

Warhawk! Don't bother!

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

Wii U + PS3 + X360 + PC = 1m
3DS = did more than 700k

[DualWielding]

Revelations probably make more money than 6, a 3DS game is cheaper to made and upscaling the graphics couldn't have been that expensive

[showtimefolks]

after resident evil 6 i lost all hope. even thought this handheld HD version has sold over 1 million, which is good i just don't think capcom is interested in these kind of games

they want RE series to be over the type summer blockbuster and that's just not what the fans want

a complete reboot done by a complete new team, please bring some fresh new ideas

also i think we will see many gaming IP's just go to the reboot route after 6-8 games per series

[Finch]

I used to love RE. But since the game lost all the puzzle survival and mystery. I pretty much gave up on the game except for rental.

[sobekflakmonkey]

it's basically a really shitty action movie now, they need to go back to basics.

[sweetSWAGGER]

This, a thousand times.

When the series decides to stop treating me like a braind dead monkey who just wants to watch a movie, then MAYBE I'll give it another chance. As it stands, I just can't support this series anymore. When the game takes control from you so that THE CHARACTERS THEMSELVES can react to a jump scare, that's just bad design. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, gents.

[dansdooz]

its a port of a 3ds game for gods sake, while its good on the 3ds im not sure it would convert well to a 360 or ps3, it was designed for handheld. seems it sold ok for what it is.

[tigertron]

A million sales from an old port is VERY GOOD.

[Baka-akaB]

Except they excepted to scam disgruntled fans that dislike the new direction from 5-6 (itself a mockery of 4's vision) into buying it as a kool-aid and replacement . it's probably why they might be still dissapointed

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

across 4 platforms it not
especially with two platform have over 70m users at the time

[gantarat]

Resident Evil: Revelations HD not POOR SALE
Capcom say game meets projected sales
http://www.neogaf.com/forum...

[Matt666]

Go back to how Resident evil was (I.E. RE1-CVx) not the action based crap you call 4-6

[gantarat]

should make 2 title (action title - horror title)

[ninjahunter]

The game industry is changing at the moment, due to the explosive growth in gaming, the costs of getting a game out there has bloated immensely. If you go the regular route of getting a publisher, paying for marketing, a fee from the platform owner(valve,microsoft,sony), and finally distribution, Your only seeing 10-15% of sales making its way back to you. Imagine you go to work and do your minimum wage job, then when you go to get your paycheck your boss takes 90% for the luxury of having the job, that's the games industry at the moment.

And we do see a few people completely bypassing the system, such as Mojang who did everything for minecraft independently and made over $300million, which would have otherwise only been $30million. OR CD Project RED Used GOG to bypass the system with the witcher 2 and made massive profits off of only a million sales.

[ifrit_caress]

I never did like Resident Evil. I always prefered Silent Hill.

[ShaunCameron]

RE:R was a spin-off game. And spin-offs rarely ever sell as well as the main games. I'd wait and see how the next main RE game does before writing it off.

[gantarat]

RE:R its main but use subtitle name like code veronica

[boldscot]

They gave us some hope with Lost in Nightmares for Resident Evil 5 but quickly took that away with Resident Evil 6. I have no doubt that they are working on their next over the top action, brain dead Hollywood movie style , characters jumping all over the place and Kung Fu kicking everything in sight game.

[_FantasmA_]

I actually like the shooting mechanics or the new RE games more than any other shooter nowadays. Being able to shoot a zombie in the leg and running up and kicking it is sweet as well as shooting off their heads. However, the games need to be "scary". There needs to be monsters that chase you through rooms or offscreen with less ammo. Keep the melee combat in the game but make it so that its a risky move that way I don't do that to every zombie. Also take out the military stuff and add in a flashlight in dark rooms. Its still possible to keep the weapons and mechanics of the newer games and make and older, puzzle filled RE.