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The next game in the Resident Evil series will return to the game’s survival horror roots, Capcom says.

The firm told MCV it has listened to the negative feedback to last year’s Resident Evil 6, which scored a Metacritic of just 67.

Capcom had hoped to appeal to a wide audience with last October’s game by including three different stories that targeted different parts of the Resident Evil fanbase including those that liked creepy survival horror and those that preferred action gameplay.

But it proved disappointing to fans and critics, and although it went on to sell 5m units worldwide, that was 2m below the company’s original sales projections.

Now Capcom says it has listened to its fans, which have called for the series to return to its classic horror gameplay.

"We have obviously seen the consumer response and the PR response," former Capcom marketing boss Michael Pattison told MCV.

"There was some great positives out of that, but it was a mixed bag, as we saw from the review scores. We have got to take that on-board, we can’t ignore that, and we have to take that onto the next game when we make the next Resident Evil.

He added: With Resident Evil 6 specifically, we probably put too much content in there, there were comments from consumers that said it felt bloated. The Leon missions went down very well, and because we did Resident Evil Revelations on 3DS, there was a cry out for us to focus our attention on survival horror, rather than be too many things to all people. You’ll find where we go next will likely be more targeted at our core fanbase.

"A lot is said about the saturation of this zombie, post-apocalyptic survival horror. But it is still alive and well. The Last of Us shows a good direction of what the consumers want. Tomb Raider as well, we spoke to R&D and they looked at that and they enjoyed that experience. I think that proves there is still a strong market for that sort of content."