Do you remember the first time the dogs burst through the windows in the original Resident Evil? What about that chilling feeling that crept over you as your eyes saw a bloodied pink bunny mascot laying cold against an amusement park bench in Silent Hill 3? Indeed, any fan of survival horror games has moments that will live with them forever. Sadly, this genre has slowly decayed in recent years as publishers chase after the Call of Duty money trail. What many of these publishers fail to realize is that 80 percent of your profit comes from 20 percent of your customers. It is the most basic idea taught in all introductory marketing classes. Yet, the never-ending paper chase has led many developers to walk away from the most basic principles that made their games so memorable in the first place. 

Capcom learned a tough lesson this year when it dramatically downgraded its profit expectations for Resident Evil 6. Even more telling is the lack of sales accompanying other such well know brands including Silent Hill and Dead Space. Each one tipping the scales toward an action horror formula that may bring onboard a few newcomers, but mostly just leaves a bad taste in the mouth of long time series fans. What many of the publishers fail to forget is the aforementioned 80/20 rule. Diehard fans are the ones most apt to pre-order your games. They spend the extras on game guides, special editions, and future game releases. Brand equity is something you do not establish via a heavy machine gun and Michael Bay style explosions in your games. You isolate the fans that made your game what it is today. The 80/20 rule matters here because any business owner can attest to the fact that a new customer costs a company 6x as much to acquire as keeping a current one.

Consider this: If you like Bioshock, your more likely to buy Bioshock Infinite than someone who never played the original. Recently, Dark Souls II announced their intentions to launch a massive marketing campaign to reach new customers of their products. The problem is their return on investment will never equal what they spend to reach this new customer market. Most of the sales generated from Dark Souls II will be the growing fanbase of the first two games. So a current customer is much cheaper to acquire than trying to reach someone via advertising who never considered playing the game for any number of reasons.

With this is mind, imagine being a survival horror game that now goes action horror. Capcom spent a fortune trying to lure in the COD/Battlefield crowd. If they would have invested in their current fanbase, the game may have been the highest selling RE game to date. As such, they continued to change their formula to reach a new market. In the process, they abandoned many of the hardcore fans insisting they knew better. Remember that 80 percent profit margin starts to dwindle when you isolate the 20 percent of fans who always buy your games. When they walk away, you need to spend more on marketing to get that new COD crowd you feel will love RE 6 for its hardcore action. When they don't jump on board as expected, your profits sink and people lose their jobs.

Shinji Mikami seeks to change this trend with the Evil Within. From the very start of its production, the game focuses in survival horror. He doesn't want to launch a marketing campaign to the COD crowd, rather reach out to the already dislocated survival horror fans. It is within this niche market that Shinji will find great success. Early E3 reveals show the game is definitely on track to please fans of old school survival horror. If the Evil Within is successful, will more publishers follow suit? Or will we continue to see many of the franchises we love slip further into wannabe COD decay? What say you?