Mikami: Remake's Poor Sales Created RE4's Focus

[blackpower]

Resident evil 4 is not bad at all, especially as some areas (the village is the Castle).

[djepic112]

I remember buying a Gamecube just for Resident Evil. I felt betrayed that Capcom would make the main series exclusive to Nintendo considering it had been such a strong Playstation franchise beforehand. Years later, Capcom is still signing exclusivity contracts with consoles for extra money upfront. They are one of the multi-console developers who do this on a regular basis. It really annoys the hell out of me. Dead Rising 1 is a great game but is exclusive to the Xbox 360. I thought Capcom was going to allow more gamers to experience the series with DR2 but now you have DR3 being an Xbox One title.

I've since become more of a PC gamer and capcom really neglects this market. I should just stop buying Capcom games.

[ParasiteAdam]

I remember buying a Gamecube just for Resident Evil. I felt betrayed that Capcom would make the main series exclusive to Nintendo considering it had been such a strong Playstation franchise beforehand. Years later, Capcom is still signing exclusivity contracts with consoles for extra money upfront. They are one of the multi-console developers who do this on a regular basis. It really annoys the hell out of me. Dead Rising 1 is a great game but is exclusive to the Xbox 360. I thought Capcom was going to allow more gamers to experience the series with DR2 but now you have DR3 being an Xbox One title.

I've since become more of a PC gamer and capcom really neglects this market. I should just stop buying Capcom games.

Hah dude you just summed up why Capcom pretty much has no money in the bank

[Guest]

Bitches about sales but ONLY releases it on a Nintendo system..... I'm confused. It they would of released it on GC and PS2 and even PC they would of sold a ton more. As for RE4, RE4 is an amazing game and i'm from the old era Resident Evil times.... It's just not a resident evil game. I'm glad we got RE4, I just wish it was under a different name and they were still gonna make new era old style Resi games.

[Mikhail]

How do re0 & remake compare against the sales of outbreak 1 & 2 though?

[Lanzagranadas]

How do re0 & remake compare against the sales of outbreak 1 & 2 though?

RE (remake) sold around 100.000 units above RE0, and Outbreak (1) sold around 100.000 units above RE remake. Outbreak File 2 didn´t even reach the million due to the poor reception of its prequel.

[yurieu]

I remember buying a Gamecube just for Resident Evil.

Me too. Fools blame Capcom and Nintendo, but in 2001 everybody knew the exclusivity and still bought the PS2; furthermore, everybody knew the GC was generally superior and had all the multiplatform titles.

Wrong.

No need to ask the developers to know that, it is obvious there is no such things like "last installment of the franchise".

[BrionIrons]

I totally disagree with Mikami on this. Remake was not a failure in anyway. I play Remake more than I play 4.Oh wait that's right. I sold 4.lol

[Vixtro]

I agree that it was a silly decision for Capcom to make REmake exclusive to the Gamecube and still expect really good sales, but was anyone back then actually surprised that it was only on the Gamecube?

Ports of RE1 to the Sega Saturn, RE2 to the N64, Resident Evil CODE: Veronica being made exclusively for the Dreamcast, and even knowing of the exclusive Resident Evil Zero for the N64 that was in development; it didn't surprise me at all that REmake was Gamecube exclusive. Not to say that it didn't pee me off a bit, I was reluctant to have anything to do with the game until I played it for myself on a mates Gamecube, then I was sold, I had to own the game for myself. I'm glad it forced me to get a Gamecube as well because there were plenty of other exclusive games (mostly Nintendo of course) that I enjoyed.

It's kind of interesting to talk about Resident Evil Zero more, once I heard that the game was coming back, but for the Gamecube, it made sense to me and made me realise that REmake was used to build up to it, as if in a way to make up for it's protracted development time. Unfortunately, it had an adverse effect as REZero couldn't live up to the high standards that REmake set. Was still a fine Resident Evil outing though in it's own right, and I would still love to see a co-op port today, shame Capcom just don't give a toss about the proper RE fans these days though....

[Rombie]

I agree that it was a silly decision for Capcom to make REmake exclusive to the Gamecube and still expect really good sales, but was anyone back then actually surprised that it was only on the Gamecube?

Actually yes.

By the start of 2001 Capcom had already announced and then in March released Code Veronica to the PS2. They continued, every time they were asked at events, that RE4 was to be launched on Sony's console - the answer would be yes. Between the TGS 1999 and until the announcement of the Biohazard Remake, and then specifically the "Capcom 5", interviews also pushed a focus of more mutiplatform releases and less single console (Okamoto especially would love to talk about this and more online game development - which is where Outbreak came from in the end). So there was an expectation setup there as well, which looked to be accurately shown when Code Veronica turned up on the rival console. Zero was expected to be GC only, because Zero was already going to be a N64 title... so that in itself wasn't a surprise, but the general disbelief when the announcement of the franchise being all on there threw a lot of people for a loop.

Mikami himself has a lot to answer for in regards to the Nintendo exclusivity, it seems like he was the one who really pushed for it. Between it and other console exclusives, Capcom's management couldn't have gotten it more wrong in that generation. In the end, Mikami ended up paying for it with the loss of Clover.

[Vixtro]

Going back to what I said about REmake being the 'tide-you-over' till REZero was released, it just made it seem really unlikely to me that it would be ported, and when RE4 hit, that was pretty much the final blow, more so for more important reasons.

Talking about Outbreak though, I was bitterly disappointed that it was ps2 exclusive, I just couldn't wrap my head around a game being made for online gaming, but not being released for the Xbox, which at that point already had a well established online gaming platform with Xbox Live. I was contemplating getting my ps2 ready for online gaming, just so I could play Outbreak online, but once I heard they scrapped the online mode from the PAL release, I shafted any and all support for Capcom on the ps2.

I did eventually get both the Outbreak games years later, played through both of them once, and they're not bad, but it's all too obvious to see where they would really shine. Still bothers me to this day why Capcom simply haven't made an online enabled HD port (bundle) of both games via digital distribution at least....

[Guest]

Everything happened because Mikami was a graphics-whore. One of the main reasons he preferred the Gamecube over the PS2 was the graphics. According to him "They look like a real movie".

[Don Piano]

Everything happened because Mikami was a graphics-whore. One of the main reasons he preferred the Gamecube over the PS2 was the graphics. According to him "They look like a real movie".

Wouldnt they have benefited from the PS2 more with the RE:Make and RE0 both using pre-rendered backgrounds?, GC discs cant hold as much as a normal DVD so they could be in a higher res if on a DVD. I know they are both 2 disc games but im sure that would of cut costs abit

But i dont have regrets about buying a gc back in the day, I would say its my favorite nintendo system

[Guest]

Wouldnt they have benefited from the PS2 more with the RE:Make and RE0 both using pre-rendered backgrounds?, GC discs cant hold as much as a normal DVD so they could be in a higher res if on a DVD. I know they are both 2 disc games but im sure that would of cut costs abit

But i dont have regrets about buying a gc back in the day, I would say its my favorite nintendo system

According to him, the PS2 didn't had the processing power needed to reproduce the pre-rendered backgrounds. So if they ever had to make the game, they would have to use 3D. Honestly, I don't care if the graphics would be inferior, Outbreak had good graphics for a 3D game and I liked it.

[MiLØ]

According to him, the PS2 didn't had the processing power needed to reproduce the pre-rendered backgrounds. So if they ever had to make the game, they would have to use 3D. Honestly, I don't care if the graphics would be inferior, Outbreak had good graphics for a 3D game and I liked it.

That's strange he said that. Those backgrounds from RE0 and REmake are basically a bunch of jpeg images looped together to create animated pre-rendered backgrounds. I think if PS1 could handle Fear Effect 1&2 which had very similar technology (STR videos for backgrounds) then PS2 should be able to handle the same thing only with higher resolution.