According to an insider, Resident Evil Village was originally also supposed to be released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. But why did the developers at Capcom decide to cancel the implementations for the slowly waning console generation?
Last week, Capcom used Sony Interactive Entertainments online event to line up the PS5 for the official unveiling of Resident Evil Village. While the various rumors about the setting of the new spin-off came true, the insiders who provided us with various details about the title in the past few weeks should be wrong in one thing.
So it was repeatedly said that Resident Evil Village should be a so-called cross-generation title that also appears for the current console generation. As Capcom announced in the announcement, this is not the case.
Instead, Resident Evil Village is only under development for the PC, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5. According to the insider Dusk Golem, which is considered to be a reliable source, a version for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 was indeed worked on. For technical reasons, the developers at Capcom are said to have decided to discontinue this.
Okay, I got some clarification on why they made RE8 next-gen only, when it was cross-gen previously. With the updated graphic fidelity overhaul they’re doing (still in progress), the way RE8 was designed lead to past-gen consoles having a lot of pop-in/long texture loads/load times because the game has you travelling through most of the Village and had a lot of load zones. Because there’s a bigger focus on exploration this would lead to the last-gen console versions having notable issues, and it was holding back how pretty they could make certain scenes. So they decided to drop the last-gen versions of the game to make it so the game had no loading at all (not limited by last gen hardware) and push the graphic overhaul further without the limitations of last-gen tech in mind.
(1/3) Okay, I got some clarification on why they made RE8 next-gen only, when it was cross-gen previously. With the updated graphic fidelity overhaul they're doing (still in progress), the way RE8 was designed lead to past-gen consoles having a lot of pop-in/long texture loads/
— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) June 13, 2020
Above all, the impressive graphics of Resident Evil Village and the focus on exploring the game world would have ensured that the title on the consoles of the slowly fading generation had to struggle with various problems such as pop-ups or loading times. At the same time, support for the PS4 or Xbox One would have held back the developers and prevented the implementation of planned features or scenes.
In order to make the next big leap in terms of graphics and to take the Resident Evil series to the next level without technical restrictions such as loading times, the decision was ultimately made to forego porting for the PS4 and the Xbox One in conclusion.
Resident Evil Village will release on a date yet to be confirmed.
