Resident Evil 5 Date Confirmed... (Sort of)

[Project Omega]

Lurking within notes recently issued by Kenzo Tsujimoto Capcom President & CEO regarding the publisher's latest financial reports is the first suggestion that Resident Evil 5 will appear within the next fiscal period.

In the report issued earlier today, Tsujimoto-san notes: "In order to make Capcom more competitive, we will focus on further strengthening development of our core home video games business, marketing efforts and sales efforts. We plan to create a title portfolio that accurately reflects the global market share, as well as strengthen our R&D organization and staff. Our title lineup includes many new titles in our existing franchises over the next period, including 'Resident Evil 5'."

The first hint of a confirmed release period since reports that the developers were encountering issues with the title, the claim suggests that the highly anticipated title will make an appearance in Japan at least before March 31st 2008. If Resident Evil 5 was to make a release for the Holiday period this year and join an already jam-packed festive lineup in Japan and North America, we could possibly see the PlayStation3 and Xbox 360 title released across Europe in time for Easter 2008.

Source : TotalVideoGames.com

The article made for a quite interesting read. It's good to know Capcom is strengthening RE5's development. There's rumors (old ones) that RE5 would make use of the Unreal Engine (Capcom confirmed that they would use the Unreal Engine 3.0, just never said with what game.)

It sort of makes you wonder if we will be seeing Resident Evil 5 earlier than a Summer 2008 release

Edit - I just found the Presidential Statement on the FY2006 Financial Results on Capcom Japan's Investor Relation website and I just noticed two rather important aspects :

(2) Major Emphasis on Strengthening Key Divisions

In order to make Capcom more competitive, we will focus on further strengthening development of our core home video games business, marketing efforts and sales efforts. We plan to create a title portfolio that accurately reflects the global market share, as well as strengthen our R&D organization and staff. Our title lineup over the next few years includes many new titles, such as Resident Evil 5, from our existing franchises.

and

(4) Business Selection and Concentration

In order to realize the collective group potential, it is important that Capcom makes prompt scrap-and-build efforts a cornerstone of its business. In order to improve R&D’s overall position, "Studio 8", "Flagship", and "Clover Studio" have been closed while those resources have been focused on expanding areas such as the online business "Daletto" and the North American mobile content developer "Capcom Interactive". We have also established "Capcom Korea", to gain a foothold in a new market. We will also continue to implement changes that improve the efficiency of the overall group.

What does this mean for Resident Evil 5? [SIZE=1]All of the studios that have or were working on Resident Evil material are now closed? This raises some questions regarding what Capcom has in mind for the Resident Evil franchise...[/SIZE]

[Umon Daisuke]

Capcom USA licensed Unreal 3.0, not Capcom Japan. RE5, like DMC4 (and LP etc) is using their own proprietery Framework engine, confirmed. Also, Studio 8 was the US division's R&D studio, and neither Clover or Flagship have worked on RE aside from Mikami moonlighting when Clover was newly established. So this really means nothing. We know it's being developed by Studio 2 and the team primarily consists of people who had worked on the PS1 games.

I can't draw any conclusions from Tsujimoto's statement, other than that RE5 is coming. But if the report specifically mentions "next fiscal period", it means anytime after March 31, 2008 when the current FY 2007 ends.

[MeganGrass]

Given what little we already know about Bio5, the "hot weather factor", and Tsujimoto's statement of the game being released in the next fiscal year, my bet is a Summer '08 release.

[News Bot]

What time of the year are RE games usually released anyway? Autumn?

[Carnivol]

neither Clover or Flagship have worked on RE aside from Mikami moonlighting when Clover was newly established.

Sure, Clover's not had much to say about RE/BH sans Mikami's involvement, but key staff such as Hideki Kamiya (RE2, DMC) have had past involvement in the franchise.

And as for Flagship, they've been involved in production and scenario writing and design pretty much almost all the way, including even the oddities such as the Gun Survivor franchise, Deadly Silence and 4D Executor.

What time of the year are RE games usually released anyway? Autumn?

I'd like to say "When they're done", but I guess you could say the average initial release of a RE/BH game is during Q1 in US/JP, and then around the change from Q3 to Q4 in Europe, and excluding the localized titles released during summer, then it's the other way around, with US/JP release in Q3/Q4 (September/October) and EU release in Q1 the year after.

[Umon Daisuke]

True, but Kamiya's involvement in RE stopped with RE2... we know what he turned RE4 to. If anything, DMC as a franchise will be more affected since he had a lot to do with getting the franchise back on track after the abysmal DMC2.

You may be overstating Flagship's involvement... though it really was major when Okamoto was in charge up to the release of CV (that includes the original Zero scenario, and of course, the way RE2 ended up). It went down further with Sugimura's demise.

DS's development was done internally at R&D2... did you mean technical support because of their closer ties to Nintendo? The scenario itself predates Flagship, and I know that one localization staff re-wrote some of it and put his name in the game -_-