Resident Evil producer cops to "too many" releases

Resident Evil producer Masachika Kawata has admitted that the franchise might have suffered from a glut of releases in the last few years.

"I think certainly looking at the last year or two, there probably were a few too many," Kawata told VideoGamer.

"I think we learned last year that putting on a lot of titles would not necessarily win over gamers."

Nevertheless, the producer said to "stagger them out artificially" wouldn't solve the problem; there's a more fundamental issue that needs to be addressed.

"We should always start by asking how do we make the games better. And if the solution to making the games better is to have a more staggered release than we've had recently then that's something we'll do," he said.

"But we'll do it for that reason and not just for flipping what we've done already."

During Capcom's most recent financial report, it described Resident Evil 6 as a "failure", managing just 4.8 million sales in 2012 - not enough to return a profit on what was Capcom's largest and most expensive production to date.

Kawata has also commented recently that he has changed his mind about Resident Evil needing to take an action route to succeed, and that he's considered rebooting the franchise.

The next Resident Evil release is an HD remake of 3DS title Revelations for home consoles and PC. The portable title was a slightly more traditional treatment of the horror property than the action-heavy Resident Evil 6.

Thanks, Develop.