After seemingly ages, one of the biggest announced titles to come out of Japan in recent memory is finally set to be revealed. Electronic Arts has announced a special “Tokyo Showcase” event to be held before the upcoming Tokyo Game Show, and along with it will be our first glimpse of the announced co-production between two of the biggest names in Japan: Resident Evil mastermind Shinji Mikami and the man behind No More Heroes, Goichi “Suda 51” Suda.
Only bits and pieces about the game have been revealed since the title was announced in 2008, such as the game being in the survival horror genre, and being scored by Silent Hill’s Akira Yamaoka. But the announcement that the game will be shown first at TGS also gave one new tidbit of information, as the game is now likely to be on less platforms than initially announced.
According to EA Partners head David DeMartini, talking to Eurogamer, the title is only set for release on the Xbox 360 and PS3…despite being initially announced for those platforms as well as the PC and Wii. Unfortunately, if the games are indeed cancelled for those platforms, it certainly wouldn’t be surprising.
For one, the status of the PC has continued to grow weaker as fewer and fewer genres seem to have any sort of success on it, most notably real-time strategy and MMORPGs. While Resident Evil has popped up on PC from time to time, a console release would be much higher-profile, not to mention, much more successful.
Meanwhile, the Wii horse has been beaten to death and back, and then to death again. While some mature titles, most notably Suda’s own No More Heroes, have found success on Wii, the success is usually nothing more than that of a cult hit, while Nintendo’s own titles continue to blow away all competition on the platform. Combine that with the need for downgraded graphics and the need for a completely different control scheme based around the Wii Remote, and it’s no surprise that a Wii version of the game may have been cancelled to focus on the HD versions of the game.
Whatever the case, however, TGS can’t come soon enough as we get our first look at the game by two of Japan’s biggest masterminds. With the survival horror genre once again in desperate need of a reboot, this could very well be the game to bring the scare back to the industry.
