The Resident Evil 4 Remake Announced For A Surprising Platform
The Resident Evil 4 remake is coming to the last-gen PlayStation console.
This article is more than 2 years old
Besides announcing the return of four iconic characters to Street Fighter 6, Capcom also announced that their upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake is unexpectedly headed for PlayStation 4, as well as new-gen consoles. Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, the producer of the highly-anticipated remake, disclosed that the game is currently in development for the last-gen PlayStation console but has failed to mention any Xbox One or Nintendo Switch versions of the game.
As reported by IGN, the Resident Evil 4 remake was initially announced for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, but Capcom apparently decided to develop a PlayStation 4 version of the game. It most certainly raises the question about the game version of the previous-gen Xbox console and why Capcom decided against developing a Resident Evil 4 remake for Microsoft’s Xbox One. However, the reasons behind Capcom’s decision are more than sound, especially considering the current state of the gaming industry.
Allow us to elaborate; Microsoft discontinued production of its Xbox One console and doubled its efforts to produce as many Xbox Series S units as means of countering the global semiconductor shortage. Considering that Series S uses considerably fewer semiconductive components compared to Series X, that was an entirely viable business move that allowed Microsoft to deliver Series S to retailers and satisfy the demand as much as possible. So, developing the Resident Evil 4 remake for a discontinued console isn’t really a viable business decision for Capcom.
Sony, on the other hand, hasn’t pulled the plug on its PlayStation 4 console in terms of production. This allowed the company to stay on the market, despite failing to satisfy the demand for its current flagship, the PlayStation 5, which is still pretty hard to obtain, despite the waning shortage of semiconductive elements. In addition, Sony just recently bumped up the prices of both editions of the PlayStation 5 console, which makes the console slightly less accessible to gamers. However, freshly produced units of PlayStation 4 remain readily available at the stores.
Considering that there are roughly 116 million units of PlayStation 4 in households over the world and only 20 million units of PlayStation 5, Capcom’s decision to develop Resident Evil 4 remake for PS4 actually isn’t surprising at all — it’s quite reasonable. This means that the highly-anticipated remake will launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC simultaneously — Xbox One, while still supported by Microsoft, is becoming less viable for software development by the day. As for Nintendo Switch, well, it took Batman 7 years to reach the console; RE4 will get there eventually.
The remake of the game, whose groundbreaking camera wasn’t designed to be groundbreaking, will introduce some changes to the original gameplay to better suit modern gaming standards. Additionally, there’s talk about some story rectification that would allegedly connect the Resident Evil 4 remake with 2021’s Resident Evil Village. The latter is also in-line for an update; the DLC called Winters Expansion will include a new story chapter called “Shadow of Rose,” a third-person mode, and an expanded Mercenaries mode that features the tall vampire lady as a playable character.
