Resident Evil Needs to Diversify to Increase Appeal

The Resident Evil franchise will be expanded via Operation Racoon City and Revelations in the next few months but no sixth core game is being planned yet, which has made some fans of the series a little bit nervous.

But one of the main developers working on the series has said that Resident Evil needs to become more diverse in order to make sure that gamers do not become “sick” of its survival horror genre roots.

Speaking to Gamasutra Masachika Kawata, who is the producer working on the Resident Evil series has said, “At the core, basically, we want to make the best use of our brand. Resident Evil is an IP, and a franchise, that people have loved for a long time.”

He added, “It's still very, very popular and we're very, very happy about that, and we want to basically answer all the requests that we get about the series. People want to see a lot of different experiences within the Resident Evil universe, and so we've been fortunate enough to be able to answer those requests with a lot of different experiences, in different forms, in games.”

Masachika Kawata believes that there's no danger of diluting the brand because each player can see where the various Resident Evil games is going and can choose whether the genre and the mechanics used are suited to the experience he wants from the universe.

Resident Evil: Revelations will be launched exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS handheld and will have a focus on exploration and puzzles, with the battles described as tense affairs conducted with limited ammunition.

Operation Raccoon City, on the other hand, is a full fledged third person shooter that will launch on home consoles and on the PC and will allow players to choose from six characters and take on the zombie threat with overwhelming power and special abilities.