Capcom still has the magic touch. The recent re-release of the original Resident Evil in the form of Resident Evil HD Remaster has managed to set a record for the opening day sales on the PlayStation Network.
Game Informer is reporting that the massive opening for Resident Evil HD is breaking records and causing a lot of dollar signs to pop up in the eyes of Capcom executives. In fact, Resident Evil HD could be one of the more under-reported phenomena to take gaming by storm. The amount of people looking for cheats, walkthroughs and news about the game was kind of shocking, and the search results had sales to match.
Resident Evil HD is a remastered version of the GameCube release from way back in 2002. Funnily enough, the GameCube release of the game was actually a remake of the Resident Evil: Director's Cut from 1997, which was a re-release of the original Resident Evil from 1996. Yeah, Capcom really knows how to get the most out of re-releases, eh?
Anyway, Resident Evil HD making its way to the Xbox One and PS4 for the very first time managed to spark a ton of interest from the core gaming audience, since the last time they had a chance to play an updated version of the original was more than a decade ago.
According to the Game Informer article, they were curious if the explosive sales and high-impact interest from gamers for the remastered edition of the original Resident Evil would be enough to prod Capcom into tackling a remastered edition of Resident Evil 2. Capcom responded to their inquiry, but had nothing to share at the moment.
Bummer.
Previously, a programmer-in-training had taken all the old assets from various Resident Evil games and recompiled them into the Unreal Engine, along with sounds, voices and cinematics from Resident Evil 2, and then manually coded a working version of the game. Impressive does not begin to describe this kid's skill.
Of course, the remake of Resident Evil 2 in the Unreal Engine prompted tons of gamers to e-beg the coder to release his project to the public. This also resulted in a lot of tears and huffing and puffing from gamers blaming Capcom for not re-releasing Resident Evil 2 with better graphics and updated controls.
Given Capcom's reticence about the situation after Game Informer asked them about it, I wouldn't put it past them that they're already looking at the logistics to churn out a remastered edition of Resident Evil 2 before the summer is out (or pushing further past that, before the year is out).
At the moment, Capcom has DmC: Devil May Cry Definitive Edition on the way for the Xbox One and PS4 due out this March, so I'm sure they would prefer focusing on that right now. Following up on that they don't seem to have a whole lot on their plate looking into the immediate future beyond Resident Evil Revelations 2. Also, Street Fighter V is a long ways off, so we'll see what Capcom comes up with for Resident Evil now that it's been proven that Resident Evil HD Remaster is a pretty big smash hit.
