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The franchise's producer Jun Takeuchi revealed that Capcom originally wanted to make Resident Evil 7 a live-service game that contained an online multiplayer mode and microtransactions.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard could have been a multiplayer live-service game if Capcom marketing had its way. That's according to the franchise's producer Jun Takeuchi who, in a conversation with the former director of the series Shinji Mikami, revealed how the initial version of the horror game differed from the final product and how the development team fought to ensure that the title would be a more traditional single-player experience.
Takeuchi shared that when development of Resident Evil 7 was just beginning, Capcom was at a point where it was trying to figure out which direction to take. The management of the company believed that it was necessary to make multiplayer games that, at the time, were in demand on the market.
"Right around that time, there was a big push at Capcom, a big 'marketing' push, saying 'we have to make the games players are asking for,'" Takeuchi said. "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!'"
"The idea of multiplayer got killed off pretty quickly. If we could properly put it together, we could make an exciting horror multiplayer game, but we didn’t really have any good ideas, so we set it aside," Takeuchi explained. "We went down the list, chopping them out, until we had marketing’s worst nightmare – a regular old single-player horror game."
This "marketing's worst nightmare", however, turned out to be the thing that eventually made the game successful. Resident Evil 7 is now one of Capcom's top-selling titles with over 11 million copies sold, following only Monster Hunter: World in the "Platinum Titles" list.
You can watch the full discussion on the official Biohazard YouTube channel. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.