Resident Evil 6 “Unable To Sufficiently Appeal To Users” Say Capcom

At a recent third quarter earnings Q&A, Capcom were asked why sales of Resident Evil 6 have been weaker than expected. Here’s the official response:

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. 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.

One of the possible changes Capcom are considering in the future is to focus more on the fear aspect of the series. In an interview with Eurogamer, Resident Evil: Revelations producer, Masachika Kawata, stated: “Moving forward I can see us focusing even more on the horror aspect and fear in the series, and see us making something scarier than we have already.”

“We don’t want to respond directly to, for example, the reaction to Resident Evil 6,” Kawata elaborated, “[rather than] taking a chance to re-examine the series as a whole within ourselves, within the company, and decide where we want to take it from there.”

Kawata also mentioned that Capcom will be watching the feedback to Resident Evil: Revelations on PC and consoles carefully to gauge what fans want from the Resident Evil franchise.