At a Game Developers Conference today, Capcom discussed the subject of why they brought Resident Evil to portables in the form of Resident Evil: Revelations for the Nintendo 3DS. The answer, Capcom producer, Masachika Kawata says, is threefold. These captions are direct quotes of the three slides Kawata used to explain:

The graphical specs had rapidly increased over past hardware:

Kawata said that while consoles naturally lead the way for better graphics, the quality of the 3DS’ visuals jumped with advanced lighting features and pixel shading, and the ability to utilize commonly-used shaders.

Cultivating a new market:

Capcom want to expand I.P. into new formats and genres to appeal to different people.

Creating new types of entertainment:

This comes down to hardware again. Capcom were keen to utilize new hardware features such as the stereoscopic 3D visuals, Street Pass functionality, and the dual-screen format of the Nintendo 3DS.

Resident Evil: Revelations has been well-received, critically, and at least in Japan, it appears to be selling rather well, too. So, will we see another 3DS Resident Evil game in the future? In a separate interview with IGN, conducted prior to GDC, Kawata says he’s interested in developing another one.

“The incredibly positive fan reaction to Revelations has definitely given me motivation to make another 3DS RE title,” Kawata says. “I have some ideas in mind. However, I have a lot of other projects that need to be taken care of first.”

“I must admit,” he continues, “Hearing players say how much they enjoyed Revelations does kind of make me want to forget the other projects and get stuck right into making another RE game for fans to enjoy (laughs).”