‘Resident Evil 7’ could have been a live service game with microtransactions

It’s been revealed that Capcom originally wanted Resident Evil 7: Biohazard to be a live service game with microtransactions.

During a recent discussion on the official Biohazard YouTube channel with Tango Gameworks founder Shinji Mikami, executive producer on Resident Evil 7 Jun Takeuchi confirmed that Capcom originally wanted the game to have an online multiplayer and microtransactions (via VGC).

“When we started working on Resident Evil 7 we went back to that ‘what is horror anyway?’ discussion,” Takeuchi said. “I talked about it a lot with [Resident Evil 7 director Koshi] Nakanishi – ‘so what are we going to do?’ We’d talked about that stuff even before starting work on Resident Evil 7, actually.”

The developer went on to explain that during this time there was a big marketing push from Capcom with the focus being on “making games players are asking for,” and pressure was put on the team to implement the live service features until Capcom’s president Kenzo Tsujimoto put a stop to it.

“So we were being told ‘make this, make that’, it was really hard on the directors at the time. ‘Online multiplayer’ this, ‘downloadable content’ that. ‘Ongoing service games! Microtransactions! Make a Resident Evil game that ticks all those boxes!’

“Seriously, there were so many demands… those poor directors. Finally, our president, [Kenzo] Tsujimoto stepped in. He’d heard about all the unsuccessful attempts at that point. So this is one of those unforgettable moments for me.

“It was January 4, the first working day of the new year. The president called me to his office. ‘Resident Evil 7 is in pretty bad shape. Takeuchi-kun, step in and help make it!’ So that’s how I ended up working on Resident Evil 7.”

Takeuchi went on to say that “the idea of multiplayer got killed off pretty quickly” because the team didn’t have any good ideas. He explained that if they did, “we could properly put it together we could make an exciting horror multiplayer game.”

In other news, a new Nintendo Treehouse Live presentation will air this week which will showcase new Splatoon 3 and Harvestella gameplay.