Capcom looking to attract Call of Duty fans to Resident Evil series

I love to be scared - the anxiety, the adrenaline. Whether its being enveloped by a good book, teetering on the edge of my seat in the theatre or plunging head-first into the world of survival horror, I want to be there.

Did you know that Resident Evil 5 was the biggest seller of the Resident Evil franchise?  For as bad as people claim it to be, marketing head of Capcom Dave Turner told MVC magazine that the popularity of the series has surged since the release of the action-packed Resident Evil 5.

This, Turner explained is why the series has taken a more dramatic turn towards action, as seen with Operation Raccoon City and will more than likely be seen with Resident Evil 6.

It makes sense to explore action more fully with Resident Evil…The dream would be that the millions of Call of Duty fans that are enjoying fast-paced online games are attracted to this [kind of] Resident Evil.

\We’re not quite sure what that means for the rest of the series.  Obviously you have the action-oriented Operation Raccoon City and Resident Evil 5, but fans will also be treated to the more atmospheric, traditional style Resident Evil: Revelations.

As noted by many readers, it’s still a little too early to peg what Resident Evil 6 is going to be like.  From the trailer, there’s obviously a lot of intense action moments, but those could be interspersed with some traditional Resident Evil horror.

It’s pretty clear ‘why’ a publisher would want to get a chunk of Call of Duty’s fanbase.  Activision reported sales figures for Modern Warfare 3 in the United States and the United Kingdom being more than 6.5 million on launch day.  Not to mention the insanity of the success of Black Ops, and almost every other game that company seems to *ahem* release.  What kind of company wouldn’t want that for their game?  Or their series?

However, it’s unclear at this point which route Capcom is going to take with the series fully.  Will there always be a mixed bag?  Will Resident Evil 7 be full on action, or will they go the traditional route?  Only time will tell.

Either way, good luck to Capcom – because if you’re looking to attract Call of Duty fans, the arena might be a little crowded.  Quite frankly, we’re still struggling to grasp the concept that RE5 was a bigger seller than RE4.

[Source]

  • Cory

    Yeah. However, RE6 is still a game that focuses on horror with some action.

  • zachary mattingly

    fuck everything about this

  • Cory

    @Zack. Calm down.

  • http://www.relyonhorror.com CJ Melendez

    I don’t mind them wanting a crap-ton of sales, but the COD series is not innovative, rehashed every year, and a lot of players are immature “bros”.

    As long as the game remains well made and not a lazy sequel, then all is well.

  • zachary mattingly

    im ok with more fans i know more money egauls more games and thats awsome i just want them to be good games resident evil 6 looks amazing but if you just made resident evil 3.5 released it i wouldnt complain about that but yes i agree with you MR.Melendez

  • Me

    After thinking about it, i went and looked at some of the earlier trailers for RE5. Personally, I don’t buy the whole Horror with some action talk, if that were the case, then the Trailer for RE6 wouldn’t seem like RE5 at night.

    I’m compelled to sum up what the trailer left me thinking: 24 with zombies.

  • Cory

    @Me. But you must consider that this is a STORY trailer. Wait till the gameplay trailers.

  • zachary mattingly

    yeah i guess well all just have to just wait and see what it looks like gameplay wise personaly i dont feel so good about the whole cover system thing because really theres only one reason for cover and thats to be shot at

  • Nero

    I makes sense why they moved towards action. Resident evil is the biggest thing in japan ( besides Zelda, their crazy about that) but it’s no as popular in the states. People say they want to make money and that’s all . Have u seen the economy? For RE to survive their had to be a change, which I thought was a good change. I was never scared in the old games, they were just fun to play. I only got scared when something popped out but it’s the same with the recent games.

  • zachary mattingly

    fair enough this only makes sence i just mean to say resident evil has a formula and a shit load of explosions wasnt part of it in the beginning but i guess its that way now a new resident evil for a new generation of resident evil fans

  • http://www.relyonhorror.com Janus

    I think that the determining factor of which route Capcom is going to take might be indicative of sales. Clearly you have the traditional RE-style play, atmospheric and moody, but then you have the more action-oriented style play of RE5, and what some of us might have taken from the RE6 trailer, and then there’s Operation Raccoon City. ORC is like a deciding factor – if people cling more to the action-oriented style, it would make sense for Capcom to continue down that path. As difficult as that is to swallow personally, the same can be said about Revelations. Perhaps one game can’t be the deciding factor? Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see releases from all ends of the spectrum?

    Like I mentioned in the article, trying to steal some fans away from CoD is a tall order – those guys are dedicated, and I don’t want to say to a completely different style of game, but a kind of game that Capcom doesn’t want with RE – it’d drown in a tidal wave of generic war shooters – even if it was a war with the undead.

  • zachary mattingly

    yeah your right i mean we have only seen a trailer of course its going to be explosive they want to pull people in hell for all we know this could be the scariest resident evil game to date and i could go with capcom making different types of resident evil games

  • Henrik

    Seeing as Capcom is money lovers if they go for COD they probably go for annual releases too then:(

    With ps3/xbox and 3ds done they still have upcoming vita/wiiu to release RE titles one.

    Then I guess we will see halfbaked/rehased titles for each console next:/

  • killer89

    Speaking of CoD…. Do you lads know, why Modern Warfares have sold so well? Isnt it a bit odd coincidence that they have sold really well, while they have insane amount of cheaters?

  • Red-Dragon-Cro

    Huh,COD is only the best sold game cuz of its multiplayer as that is the most reason why people buy it,not for its story.And i think the biggest number of COD fans are actualy little kids who think that COD is cool.

    By the way what has COD to do with this?

  • Shinox

    Except kids .. we don’t wanna see kids in RE6 EVER !!

  • Ben May

    I really hope Capcom don’t compare the sales of Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City to the sales of Resident Evil Revelations in order to decide where to take the series in the future. If they use that as a factor, then surely we’re doomed to go down the ‘action horror’ route rather than the ‘survuval horror’ route, since Resident Evil Revelations, being a 3DS-exclusive, is frustratingly out of reach to many ‘living room’ console players, while Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City is available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

    I’m certainly going to be buying Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City, but the point is, if only it was available on my system, I’d also grab Resident Evil Revelations like a shot.

    Does anybody know if Nintendo themselves had anything to do with the development of Resident Evil Revelations? I understand they did with Resident Evil Remake and Resident Evil Zero, and that’s probably why we’ll never see them on a non-Nintendo system. Or is Resident Evil Revelations more like Resident Evil 4, in that a port to Sony and Microsoft platforms may follow some time in the future?

    I don’t really know what to hope for; either that the 3DS does well so that Resident Evil Revelations does well, or that the 3DS fails so that Capcom will port it to more popular systems. Perhaps if the 3DS does well, that will also make Capcom inclined to try and repeat their success on other systems.

    I do agree that it seems nuts that Resident Evil 5 did better than Resident Evil 4. Perhaps this is down to the fact that the GameCube, being the console on which Resident Evil 4 was first released, wasn’t really as popular as the other consoles at the time, and by the time it got its release on PlayStation 2, the momentum for the game’s hype had died down somewhat. I don’t know all this, I’m just speculating.

    But to actually talk about Resident Evil 6 for a second. I would just say I haven’t got any problems with Capcom trying to bring Call of Duty fans to the series, as long as they don’t throw aside the true, long-term fans of the series in the process.

  • nemesis91286

    I been hearing a lot of people talking about how the series of Resident Evil has become more action than horror, But that doesn’t mean that the Horror is completely gone. The one thing people don’t realize is that as the technology and advances so the game-play. And that go’s for every genre i don’t care what it is. As Video Game get more realistic so does the game- play. The only reason why Resident evil 1,2,3 CV,The Remake and Zero didn’t have the game-play same RE4 and 5 was become they couldn’t make that possible back than in those days.

    Now before my comments start to lead to Controversy let me just say this, I personal was disappointed with resident evil 5 because of 3/4 of the way into the game it started to feel like i wasn’t shooting zombie/Las plagas anymore and felt like it was shooting a regular solider instead and that’s where they killed it for me.

  • nemesis91286

    Hopefully from what i seen in RE6′s trailer it look like a more darker and horror fulled environment than in RE5, Which is a major step in the right direction. Where as most of RE5 took put in Daylight hours which didn’t feel scary at all and not to mention that 3 quarters of the way through the game it felt more action than horror. With this said from the look of things it looks like RE6 is shaping it’s way into right direction let’s hope it stays that way.

  • zachary mattingly

    this is all very true we will all buy the game regardless it could be action or horror we will buy it and most likely be the only ones to play it long term all i ask is if they have to make it an action game just keep the action in the muiltplayer mode and also we havent really talked about it but is anybody here down for the coop mode

  • zachary mattingly

    this is all very true we will all buy the game regardless but is anybody here down for the coop mode or not

  • Red-Dragon-Cro

    Well we better hope for coop as it looks good and well balanced.

  • Red-Dragon-Cro

    Oh totaly forgot coop is in,had a hard day.LOL

  • zachary mattingly

    i wonder if chris or leon will die in this game

  • Red-Dragon-Cro

    I hope it never comes to that.

  • Ben May

    Co-op on Resident Evil 5 was really very good in my opinion. I only wish they hadn’t had to screw around with the single-player game so much (A.I. partner, real-time inventory) in order to accommodate it.

  • ale

    It should have multiplayer too, like team death match or stuff like what Operation Raccoon City is doing just to please the COD fans and appeal more to them. Since most COD fans only care about online multiplayer.
    Which isn’t bad since it is a lot of fun after you beat the main story of the game, good online multiplayer adds replay value.

  • ale

    Also since it’s Capcom, I hope they don’t DLC online multiplayer, or online modes, since if they want to bring COD fans then it has to be already integrated in the game and has to be well done.

  • Matt

    I don’t know about any of you guys, but RE4 and 5, despite not being as horror based as many of the games previously, still had some extremely uncomfortable and scary moments in, especially RE4. If RE6 were to be something similar to the last 3rd of RE4 then I would be very happy, as personally, the re-generators and Iron Maidens scared the living shit out of me, especially the one in the prison.

  • DarkDreamTCK

    They could be trying to attract friggen Nintendogs fans for all I care. So long as the games are still good and the storylines aren’t completely RE5 atrocious in terms of the overall canon then all is well and good.

  • andrew

    Come on people we all know what we want the future of RE to be.

    We want it to be REmake atmosphere, replace normal zombies with Crimson heads say, speed up the enemies, make them harder to kill, have the RE4 over the shoulder style gameplay.

    That way, you get the horror and the atmosphere of REmake, faster enemies which are harder to kill IE crimson heads have tobe incinerated/decapitated, keeps the horror and suspense, ups the action abit but maintains the horror. Simples.

    Could you imagine a pack of hunters or lickers, darting all over the walls, roof, and jumping at you, in the RE6 style gameplay? That would make the whole slide and turn around thing more reasonable. Capcom can make the game more action like, by upping the ante of the enemies! Ganandos and Majini were worse than slow zombies, because majini stopped infront of you for 5 seconds for you to shoot them.

    meanwhile, in RE3, when you had 4 zombies around you on hard mode, you were guaranteed to come out of that with atleast ‘Orange caution’ health, because as slow as they may be, when they corner you, one bites you, you push that off, the one behind you then lunges, its a vicious circle. They need to bring that back. Up the ante of the enemies and increase their intelligence, and for gods sake make us suffer from being hit, take chunks out our health and dont leave herbs everywhere. I want to fear taking on 4-5 zombies as much as taking on a single hunter or licker. They removed standard enemies’ one hit kills like Licker/hunter decapitation, Chimera’s throat slit.

  • drew

    No. That’s not what I want at all.

  • nemesis91286

    Hopefully from what i seen in RE6′s trailer it look like a more darker and horror fulled environment than in RE5. And believe me that is process from RE5. Now i know people’s main concern is the amount of action that going to be involved in the game but it’s like a said in a earlier post that as the technology advances and game-play mechanics improves so does the realist reactions and movement in the character/characters itself.

    And that note with that said the whole idea of progress in video games is to match that of as if you are play movie. some day along the lines video games are going to match that of movies because now what happens is the characters are going to feel and play more lifelike so of course there is going to be an action like game play involved it native to think otherwise

    So yes yesterday you guys are playing Resident evil on your PSone tomorrow you might be playing Resident Evil 10 on your Playstation 5 or Xbox1080 and game-play of the might be as lifelike as Resident Evil: Damnation.

  • andrew

    Well what do you want Drew? Thats the best compromise and if RE has to change, thats the way Id want it to go.

    personally, I wish REORC was based as you playing as UBCS Echo team, and an officer of the RPD. See the city’s murders through the RPD officers eyes becoming a full blown outbreak, the panic in the RPD, trying to evacuate citizens to an all out survival. As the UBCS members you can start from parasailing down to the streets from the UBCS chopper, and start by cleaning up Raccoon city (obviously failing), to assisting in evacuating innocent citizens (to the clock tower for example, and survivng long enough to see the mission abandoned and try to just escape. The UBCS can be more action orientated in dealing with BOWS, where as the RPD section would be more tense and focused on survival horror.

    Either way, we cant go back to how the games were before. They need to be brought forward. REmake/3/2/0 are the order in which my favourite games are. I didnt like CVX because, graphics were great at its time, but it felt so old to play. I dont like RE4 or RE5 at all, but the perspective is great.

    Just look at Dead Space, to me thats took over the mantle from Resident Evil. The perspective was perfect. it captured horror, environments were perfect, the game play was brilliant. DS2 sped things up because Isaac was more knowledgeable and knew how to handle himself. He went from innocent engineer to be able to combat Necromorphs.

    DS2 kept its environments, expanded on its brilliance whilst upping the action. Thats what Resident Evil needs to do, it needs to move forward in its gameplay. Ideally, id love REmake in RE4 camera perspective quite frankly, but it wouldnt sell as well as Resident Duty.

  • xXxJamesxX

    It makes sense for the most part, not mad about this either after clearly thinking I realize Castlevania did the samething, doing different things. I have to admit as much as Revelations demo is good the gameplay feels off if on a console so I guess it was wise to put it on portable. But you know what truly got me still wanting Revelations still despite the gameplay, the story telling element. If RE6 can deliver a rich story telling experience for both single and co-op play Nice draws you in. As for Horror well its a theme even with Action its there just more non stop and blood pumping instead of peek a boo. I see tribute to old school features l see in some future titles as a nod. But I think i they not just going for action maybe turnbased types in some etc. but thats how looks to me.

  • Elyssa

    @ Janus, Do I think a ton of COD fans will slide on over & become dedicated RE fans instead? No. But I love Call Of Duty & I spend just as much time playing the Silent Hill games, all Resident Evil games, Siren Blood Curse, Fatal Frame series, Corpse Party, Dead Space series, etc & still have time for COD.

    I’m sure there are others like myself that see the fun & enjoyment in more than one genre of video games but I highly doubt there will ever be enough fans of COD that would rather play a Resident Evil game no matter how much action they try to throw in because its a completely different game no matter how you look at it.

    Hopefully Capcom just faces the facts that Resident Evil is meant far more for horror fans than for action starving ones.

  • Guest

    so Capcom wants to attracts 5 year old kids who scream their ass off through the mic?