Topic: Stupid Capcom they believe Resident Evil is too old and users are old

Unbelievable. http://kotaku.com/resident-evil-fanbase-also-old-decaying-cap... I guess Mario to them is too old. Explains no Megaman games.

To be fair, we're talking about a Japanese company, where the concept of "outgrowing games" is still a thing in their culture. I'm sure the whole "most of our fans are in the 30s and 40s" thing has more to do surveys than anything else. I am of the belief that only older people even bother answering those stupid things...

Nintendo embraces Mario's age and uses him for next generations. Capcom can't do same?

It sounds more like they're saying that "we should broaden our appeal and stop worrying about those who want the games to be exactly like the old games". That's kind of what you do when a series evolves drastically, for better or for worse. After Resident Evil 6's problem was trying to be everything to everybody, they finally realized that they have a choice - Appeal to the younger fans, or appeal to the older fans. Guess which one's more lucrative?

Mario's the kind of character who has universal appeal though. The funny thing with horror games is that they don't appeal to everybody by nature - if people get scared easily they just won't play it. That's probably why the series shifted from flat out survival horror in the first 3 games to action with horror elements in 4-6.

That being said, Resident Evil was probably the trope codifier for zombies in video games. Across the past few years we got treated to stuff like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, State of Decay, ZombiU and Left 4 Dead - Not only have zombies become saturated in the video games industry, the games using them are also pushing the boundaries of the zombie genre to give themselves a game feel which distinguishes themselves from the others. It wouldn't surprise me if Capcom took a look at what other developers were doing with zombies and thought Resident Evil wasn't going to have the same relevance as it used to.

I don't think that's the problem. Resident Evil is still a big name with a lot of fans. The horror genre is just one of those genres that are generally less popular than others, and as gaming has grown, so has that gap.

I'm 29, which is plenty old to have been playing the original RE when it was released. And I was playing it then. Obsessively. My taste in games has not changed much since then, and as a result they completely lost me with the last 2 entries in the series. It seems like they've already made the decision to try appealing to younger gamers. Resident Evil 4 was the sweet spot. The original fans loved it, and it pulled in a lot of new folks as well. I understand the want/need to keep pushing forward, but I'm not coming back into the fold if they keep going the way they're going. No thanks, Capcom. You and your quicktime events can go float.

In Resident Evil's case, no, it cannot.

Well, right now I'm playing Resident Evil: Revelations on 3DS, and it's not only my first horror game but also my first M-rated game - and I have to say, I much prefer fighting monsters to fighting zombies or other people (as you would in, say, CoD). It's definitely one of my new favorite games - but I haven't really found it to be too scary, though. But that's just me.

That especially would make Resident Evil like it was relevant again if you ask me. Tooting in the same horn as other developers will lead to comparisons on 2 seperate fronts: Comparisons between newer and older Resi games AND comparisons to games in the same "zombie genre".
Just making a classic Resi game would automatically differentiate from the rest.

GIVE ME BACK MY TANK CONTROLS.

@Stu13 Honestly, they were never gone for good. The only thing that got added was strafing and "walking while aiming" from time to time. But the characters still controll the same way

well maybe they said that cause people didin't like resident evil 6 which was crap and made me feel like i was playing a michael bay movie

To be honest, I don't think the main problem with Resident Evil is that players are getting too old, I think the main issue is that they have no real idea where to take the storyline at this point. Resident Evil 1-3, CV, and 5 dealt with the T-Virus, the fall of Raccoon City, and what became of Umbrella in the aftermath. Each game built on that storyline, and even RE 4 has some ties to the overall series mythology.

Compare that to the two most recent mainline Resident Evil games, and you can see where they lost some of the cohesion. Revelations is a pretty good game, but the storyline feels like a "Biohazard of the Week" Plot, and Resident Evil 6 tries so hard to up the ante with Wesker dead by having the world go to hell. Neither has the strong sense of story or background that made the other games so interesting. Unless I missed them, there are no files to collect, no documents or logs, its just you going through the game world.

Even RE 4, which did have a separate storyline from the ongoing Umbrella saga had great backstory, and some cool documents to find that helped build the world

I think the other main problem is the fact that the developers can't decide where the gameplay focus should be going forward. I got the impression that some of the development team wants a return to the classic RE gameplay with RE 4's camera(Hence Revelations and Leon's storyline in 6) while the other half wants to make the game more action oriented. 6 felt like a questionable mix up for gameplay styles that just did not work together.

I think RE needs a few years off or even a reboot. At this point, I think Capcom is lost and running out of ideas on where to take the series as it is. Maybe a modern remake of the first game will help them out.

Capcom does have a point though, many modern gamers may have never played the early RE games, and I'm noticing something similar to what has plagued the Sonic fanbase over the past few years. People who played some of the newer games have no idea what the old ones play like, and they prefer the newer games while the older fans played the early ones on the Playstation and Dreamcast and want a return to that style. Some of them even consider RE 4 the point where the series took a turn for the worse and sold off its unique gameplay to cater to the masses.

I'm not shocked Capcom is having some trouble with this.

@Einherjar I know, I know. I just feel slighted by this whole deal and would like to kick and scream about it I think the somewhat awkward controls of the original 3 and CV actually added to the sense of horror, as you were just short of helpless against the more agile enemies. I never felt particularly threatened in the newer games, and they suffered in my estimation because of it.