Surprise: Capcom is making another mainline Resident Evil game

Surprise: Capcom is working on a new mainline Resident Evil game, but no exact details about the project have been announced.

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During the latest Capcom NEXT livestream show, the company confirmed that the next major Resident Evil game is currently in development. That's not exactly a big shocker considering Resident Evil is far and away Capcom's best-selling video game franchise of all time, with a cumulative 157 million copies sold worldwide in the past 28 years. Based off the sales performance of Capcom's most recent Resident Evil 4, which has sold 6.5 million since launch, there's clearly a hot demand for the franchise.

During the live stream, Resident Evil 7 game director Koshi Nakanishi said: "We're making a new Resident Evil. It was really difficult to figure out what to do after Resident Evil 7, but I found it, and to be honest, it feels substantial.

"I can't share any details just yet, but I hope you're excited for the day that I can."

The rumor mill has been spinning quite interesting stories about what's next for Resident Evil. Reports from dependable source DuskGolem indicate that Resident Evil 9 will have a more tropical setting, potentially akin to Techland's original Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide games.

Sources have told DuskGolem that Resident Evil 9 will take place in a fictional Southeastern Asian island-country. There's further reports that RE9 could be open world, and that Capcom would tap into the major innovations made with Dragon's Dogma 2 for the horror-survival game.

As for tech updates, Capcom has previously announced a new version of its proprietary RE Engine was in the works, and the so-called RE neXt engin would tap into the core strengths of higher-end chips found in the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. It's also possible and highly likely that Resident Evil 9 would tap into the big upgrades found in Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro system.