....Man

What?

Trolling is not allowed. This is a warning, next time you're out.

Considering how many Resident Evil games there are, I doubt that. Heck, look at Resident Evil Gaiden on the Gameboy. I can't say for sure how much it sold in Japan or worldwide (since the data is missing) but I doubt it was an even average amount.

As for the shooter market being oversaturated, that's something that's been proven to be false over and over and over again. Halo 3 is the perfect example for this. During the 2007 holiday season, Halo 3 was going up against another huge shooter that had a humongous launch and ended up being very successful (Call of Duty 4). Was Halo 3 hurt by this? No, it had the biggest launch in videogame history and is now on its way to selling over 10 million copies.

Capcom is just being smart, and I don't think most people realize that. Sure, they could satisfy the faithful fanboys by keeping its survival horror theme. Or they could try to make a blockbuster and keep themselves from going bankrupt. Hmm...which would you choose if you were Capcom? Nintendo chose success over the satisfaction of a couple fanboys, why do people expect differently from Capcom?

All the charts, software sales, and revenue reports are continually showing that western and European companies have completely displaced Japanese companies as the leaders of the market. Only the first party and former first party Japanese companies (Sony, Nintendo, and Sega) are shown to have any consistent software sales worldwide.

Look at Capcom's biggest successes this generation on home consoles. Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Devil May Cry, and Mega Man 9 have all kept Capcom alive. The main similarity between all these games is that they saw most of their sales in America and Europe, where software and hardware sales are growing exponentially instead of stagnating and/or shrinking.

One would also expect Capcom to try and increase their presence in Europe, where the market is growing rapidly and the Euro is rapidly rising against the Yen. The sales for Umbrella Chronicles were surprisingly high in PAL, and it's likely that a lot of these sales were from Europe (rather than Korea/Australia).

I've probably gone on too long. It's a great decision, and most companies would rather make money than satisfy a minority.

I was refering to your comparison of the Xbox 360, third person shooters, versus the PS2 and Gamecube's third person shooters, and why the analysis is flawed.

Monti FTW?

Uh, horror game = scares >>> good gameplay.

....Scares in horror games are components of good gameplay. I don't think even Benga Benga, known to break smaller men and mods in half for dissing Resident Evil, would suggest that scares are somehow more important than gameplay. Especially when they are a component thereof.

Doubtful. RE4 didn't sell that well throughout on GC, PS2, and Wii in Japan but PS360 should be able to best that weakness. I'm thinking about 500k on PS3 in Japan and 100k on 360.

Edit: Well nvm I take that back RE4 did sell better.  About 850k.  NVM this holds merit.

Horror games need a balance of both. silent hill 2 and resident evil 1,2,3 have big gameplay flaws...yet were the pinacle of gaming when they were released.

lol!

No, of course gameplay is very important and I'll be the first to admit that RE4 controlled much better than RE1-3. However controls are not the only aspect of gameplay. Like I said before I would be much happier if RE4 wasn't so easy, it used to be a hardcore series, now it's a (very, very good but still) shooter.

Parts of gameplay are as well the puzzles, number of bullets, number of herbs, etc. In the earlier RE games you really had to count your bullets and it was impossible to kill all enemies in the game. There were no checkpoints and you could only cary 6/8 items. All this made it truely a matter of survival which is great. RE4 improved the controls, but was worse on the other aspects. Combined with the loss of camera created atmosphere it makes it a move in the wrong direction.



Montana:

You're absolutely right, although the thread was about Japanese sales. But it's definitely a smart move by Capcom.
But I wonder if something like RE3.5 (Youtibe it, it really excists) wouldn't sell anymore. At least it looks like Cursed Mountain plays a bit like the old RE's.