Resident Evil 6 doesn’t have horror elements in order to appeal to the mainstream

Resident Evil 6 producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi acknowledges the fact that the new installment in the series is lacking in typical horror moments that Resident Evil games are usually known for, but he also says that Capcom did so in purpose to avoid having a “niche” audience and to have more success in the mainstream market.

“I believe you can do it – you can make a horror game with mass appeal,” Hirabayashi said while talking to 1UP. “I think you can create a really great form of horror entertainment, but if [Resident Evil 6] were the quintessential horror entertainment, it might not have mass appeal. It’ll have very niche appeal, unfortunately.”

He says the development team needed to do so “in order to survive”, i.e., make more money.

“We’re making games and we need to have mass-market appeal in order to survive,” he said. “It becomes an issue of tracking one way or the other. How far do we go into horror before we lose the support of the average player? How far are we going to lessen the horror elements at the risk of losing core fans, including Resident Evil fans?

“Where’s the Venn diagram that shows the happy medium of those things? The challenge is trying to push it as close to the edge either way, so that we can satisfy both groups of people. I think we can do it. personally speaking, I really do like horror. I like it as a genre. I’m fine with pushing it up to 11 in terms of horror. But maybe that’s not what we can do and still be saleable.”

Resident Evil 6 releases in a few days time, but reviews have started coming in and the game has received a very polarizing reaction, becoming the lowest rated canonical Resident Evil game. Check out our review round up here.

Our own review of Resident Evil 6 will be going up very soon so stay tuned.