Resident Evil Requiem will mark a very important chapter in Capcom and Nintendo’s relationship going forward. For more than a decade now, Capcom hasn’t released any Resident Evil games day-one on Nintendo hardware because Nintendo’s consoles have not been powerful enough to handle the newer games. Even putting aside Cloud versions, Capcom hasn’t had the chance to give Nintendo gamers a new RE game alongside everyone else. Resident Evil Requiem will be the first to do that, and according to a new interview, it wasn’t even a challenge to port the game to the Nintendo Switch 2.
Speaking with VGC, both Requiem’s director, Koshi Nakanishi, and producer, Masato Kumazawa, were questioned about the direction of the latest installment and other technical problems related to its development. The conversation eventually shifted to the Switch 2, and VGC wondered how involved the process was in porting Requiem over. As Kumazawa said, “Although we have released ports of the games to Nintendo platforms over the years, as you said, this is a bit more all-in on being day one on Switch 2, and that’s simply because when we got the Switch 2 hardware, we were surprised in a good way about how smooth the process was for us to bring the existing development version of the game to that platform.”
Surprised that development was, seemingly, so smooth, VGC asked if the scalability of the RE Engine was a factor and Nakanishi responded, “Well, the game was already being made in a kind of highly scalable way, so it wasn’t that difficult for the console platforms and also high end PCs with path tracing and that kind of thing, so adding the Switch 2 into that mix was just a case of somewhere else to scale it to rather than a particularly massive challenge.”
While Capcom could not comment on whether Requiem marks some bold new future for the series on Nintendo hardware, Nakanishi did state that opting for a game key card was not a development decision for the team. In his words, “It’s more of a sales strategy decision.” That’s interesting to hear, as is how Kunitsu-Gami’s Switch 2 port helped them get a better handle on the capabilities of Nintendo’s new console. You can read more in the full interview, which gives some great insight into Capcom’s development process. Some footage of the game running on Switch 2 has also leaked ahead of the Tokyo Game Show this weekend.
Related to Resident Evil Requiem
Resident Evil Requiem is confirmed for Switch 2, with ports of 7 and Village coming the same day
Leave a Comment
Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
