As more and more games are being confirmed as cross-gen titles, many are beginning to wonder how long it’ll be before developers start leveraging the upcoming next-gen hardware to build games designed exclusively for it. Resident Evil Village is one of the only major upcoming games that won’t be releasing on current-gen platforms as well- but if new information is to be believed, that very fact might be causing it troubles in development.
Known Resident Evil insider Dusk Golem (or AestheticGamer) recently took to Twitter and stated that Resident Evil Village’s PS5 version is “struggling and causing issues in development” and that it is proving to be “an actual hurdle” to its development team.
In a separate Twitter thread, Golem explains that Resident Evil Village started life as a side-project in the series, but was repurposed as RE8 following incredibly positive reception internally and from testers. Originally, the game was being planned as a cross-gen title, and was scheduled for a January 2021 launch. All of this, incidentally, is information that has been previously leaked.
In fact, Golem does on to mention that Resident Evil Village itself is technically playable on current-gen hardware, and playtesting among Resident Evil Ambassadors has often been done on a PS4 Pro, which, too, is something that’s been mentioned in previous leaks from time to time.
However, the quick load times enabled by the SSDs of the next-gen consoles are something that Capcom have been excited by, and wanting to use that to their advantage, the developers decided to drop the PS4 and Xbox One versions and instead focus on their successors, the insider says. That, again, falls in line with previous reports.
Capcom have allegedly been been able to do more with better shadows, improved character models, and the like. In particular though, the development team originally had ideas for reality warping and hallucination-related gameplay mechanics that they had to cut out due to being held back by current-gen consoles, but have now been focusing on once more.
Dusk Golem adds later, though, that the PS5 version of the game is causing Capcom a lot of problems, though the next-gen improvements they’ve tried to include have worked fine with the game’s PC and Xbox Series X versions. As a result, they have been wondering whether they should tone down some of the visual enhancements and features they’ve been working on, or even if they should release the game as a cross-gen title for it to be more widely available and perhaps be able to enjoy greater sales. The insider even states that they have a been handing out questionnaires to testers asking about whether the game should focus on next-gen hardware or be a cross-gen title.
This isn’t the first time Dusk Golem has brought up Resident Evil Village’s development team having issues with the PS5’s hardware. Previously, he cited the game as an example while stating that he’s heard the PS5 tends to struggle with 4K visuals.
Of course, as is the case with any and all unverified insider information, take this with a grain of salt, though it’s worth mentioning that Dusk Golem’s track record, especially with all things Resident Evil, has generally been solid.
Resident Evil Village is in development for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC, and currently has a vague 2021 launch window. It recently received a spooky new trailer at the PS5 Showcase, and will be receiving another update later this month at TGS 2020.