Sega Nerds

Simon Jeffery makes a slip about Resident Evil 5, on the Wii

by Graham on July 23rd, 2008

Now, don’t get too excited.  The slip was not about how Sega would be publishing/developing Resident Evil 5 on the Wii - I think Capcom is happy enough with their own teams to handle any of their franchises.  However, Simon Jeffery has made a ’slip’  (if you will) about Resident Evil 5 coming to the Wii.

In a recent E3 interview with Kotaku, the Sega of America President was asked whether Sega was taking a chance by putting a violent ‘core gamer’ oriented game on the Wii, with MADWORLD.

[Note: Above video doesn’t always seem to work or takes ages to load.  After the break is the transcribed (by yours truly) response from Simon.

“Nintendo knows it needs to expand it demographic, it needs to connect with the core gaming demographic.  Resident Evil 5  is, when that happens on the Wii, is going to help.

“But MADWORLD, and some of the other things that are going on the Wii, we really think will extend and expand the Wii gaming demographic, and Nintendo’s very, very interested in that right now.

“They know that they are connecting with the family, with the wide market.  But they are not connecting with the gamer.  Nintendo’s really excited about MADWORLD, so we are not nervous at all about that actually.”

The Kotaku boys remained very casual and calm as Simon spoke of Resident Evil 5 coming to the Wii, possibly because it didn’t register at first.  But as soon as they had the chance, they of course contacted both Nintendo and Capcom for a comment.

Discussing our Executive Pop Quiz, in which we asked Nintendo Corporate Affairs VP Denise Kaigler if Resident Evil 5 was getting a Wii version, Mr. Fils-Aime fired back with a “Not yet!” and a laugh that left us more confused than when we started the question.

Talking to Capcom’s Chris Kramer outside the publisher’s E3 meeting room, he seemed genuinely surprised to hear of such a product.

We told him that we already knew about the existence of Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop and he suggested that Mr. Jeffery was simply confusing the two products.

As far as a Wii port of the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 title, Kramer asked of us “Have you seen Resident Evil 5?” implying that such a port would be almost impossible, adding that he’d not heard any such product was in the works for Nintendo’s platform.

Kotaku also re-connected with Simon Jeffery, asking more aboutwhat had been said.  M. Jeffery implied that it was just a “simple slip of the tongue.”  Which is wholly possible, giving a further (small) explaination;

“We’d been discussing the Res Evil 5 showing at the Microsoft event earlier, and it was still on my brain – that’s all,” he wrote in an e-mail.

It is very possible that the whole thing was just a slip of the tongue.  Perhaps Simon was just getting confused by the recent announcement that Dead Rising would be coming to Nintendo’s console - both zombie games, both made by Capcom.

What with Capcom seeing some pretty good sales with Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles on the Wii, it wouldn’t be too surprising to hear that they might be thinking about a Wii version for RE 5.

However, would you really want RE 5 on the Wii, after hearing more about the Wii version of Dead Rising, and how much stuff they are taking from the original Xbox 360 game?  Like the 3-Day time limit, the camera, the free roaming, most of the zombies…  all the things that made it stand out from other zombie games.

Even though I loved the Wii controls (and overall gameplay) for RE 4, I’m not so sure I’d want a stripped down RE 5 experience.

Well whatever happens with Resident Evil on the Wii, it just goes to show that you have to be damn careful when being interviewed - as it seems most sites are talking about this news, and the possibilities.

[Source: Kotaku]

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POSTED IN: G, Interviews, News, Video