Resident Evil 5 is coming to the PS3 and Xbox 360, but that’s not news. What is news is that Capcom now finally seems confident enough that the PS3 has sold enough units to actually justify the game coming to the console.

Resident Evil 5 has been a long time coming, being officially announced way back in 2005, and still not due for release until March, 2009. The game will be launched simultaneously on the PS3 and Xbox 360, but it seems as though Capcom was potentially waiting for the Playstation 3 to be successful enough before confirming this release date.

Since Resident Evil 5 was announced, sales of the Xbox 360 have justified the game being released for the system: the Microsoft console is in enough people’s homes to guarantee good sales. But the PS3, while slowly but surely improving on the sales front, has still to reach that kind of threshold. Maybe LittleBigPlanet will help on that score.

In a conference call Capcom held to discuss its Q1 financial results, the company indicated that the PS3 has finally now hit enough people’s homes to guarantee Resident Evil 5 will be a big sales hit on the Sony console. CVG reports:

We believe that PS3 has finally reached full swing after looking at the success of Metal Gear Solid 4, as well as future large-scale title line-ups. In addition, some reduction in the PS3’s price was announced at the 2008 E3, and we can expect its spread to increase by next March when our Resident Evil 5 for PS3 will be released.

Metal Gear Solid 4 definitely helped the PS3 in terms of hardware sales, and proving to other companies that the time is ripe for the big games to be released on the system. And Capcom is now happy to release Resident Evil 5 on the system and confident enough to claw back those four years of development costs.

Capcom was also keen to reiterate its commitment to the Xbox 360 and Wii, so owners of those consoles can be sure the company will be sharing the love in the years left of this generation.

Moreover, as we are not only focusing on PS3, we would also like to spread our supply of software evenly between Wii and Xbox 360 while their markets in the world increase in a similar manner to PS3.

This makes it even clearer to me that the big games developers can see all three consoles doing well enough in this generation to warrant making games for each of them. At this point it seems as though Capcom isn’t willing to even bet on which console will come out on top and so is spreading it bets.

Resident Evil 5 looks like a brilliant addition to the series, and one which really takes it forward for this generation and beyond. There’s only another six months to wait until it finally sees the light of day, and PS3 and Xbox 360 owners can come together to enjoy the gaming goodness.

Related:

Nintendo STARS anticipate Resident ‘Wii’vil launching this Summer

Resident Evil 4 gets the power of Wii

Resident Evil 5 not an Xbox 360 exclusive - Simultaneous PS3 release

Microsoft invites Wii owners to "graduate" to Xbox 360

Wii Success "Unsustainable" says Microsoft

Entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 10:14 am under Games, Hardware, Opinion, PS3, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360.

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