The upcoming Resident Evil 8 from Capcom is ushering the classic survival-horror franchise into the next generation, serving as one of the first major truly next-gen game releases on the horizon by skipping PS4 and Xbox One entirely. This was apparently so Capcom could take proper advantage of the new consoles' hardware, but now it seems that even the super-powerful PS5 is causing some development issues for Resident Evil 8.
This is according to AestheticGamer, a frequent Resident Evil series leaker who has accurately leaked information on RE8 in the past. Someone on Twitter asked AestheticGamer if a PlayStation 4 version of Resident Evil 8 was still in development, and they explained that Capcom originally planned for this game to be cross-gen, aiming for a January 2021 release. And in fact, the Resident Evil Ambassador tests that were reported earlier this year had people playing Resident Evil 8 on a PS4 Pro.
However, Capcom's plans for Resident Evil 8 became a little too ambitious for current-generation hardware to handle. The team at Capcom would have had to cut some of their planned features if they released it as a cross-gen title. And so the decision was made to skip releasing Resident Evil 8 on PS4 and Xbox One to instead focus entirely on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the game.
Unfortunately, if AestheticGamer is to be believed, Resident Evil 8 on PS5 is itself running into development problems. "The next-gen improvements they're making work fine in the PC and Xbox X versions, but are really affecting the PS5 version." Apparently, the PS5 version of Resident Evil 8 may cause the developers to scale the game back some, and if it has to be scaled back, a cross-gen release could still be a possibility.
Since Resident Evil 8 has been featured prominently at both of the PS5 Showcase events, this may come as surprising news to fans. And admittedly, even though AestheticGamer has accurately leaked Resident Evil 8 news in the past, fans should always take information like this with a grain of salt. Even so, it's worth pointing out that the Xbox Series X is technically the more powerful console out of the two of them, and it will be interesting to see if other games will have to be "held back" so that they can run properly on both systems.
With the next-generation consoles not even having released yet, though, it's far too early to make any definitive statements on the matter. Resident Evil 8 will likely be an impressive game no matter which platform players try it out on, and with a 2021 release date for RE8, fans hopefully don't have to wait too far into next year to see if it lives up to the hype.
Resident Evil 8 launches 2021 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.