Capcom Puts Dead Rising Back on Its "Leading Brands" Slide After a Decade of Silence

Capcom has named Dead Rising as one of its "leading brands" in its latest earnings report, placing the dormant zombie series alongside Devil May Cry, Dragon's Dogma, Okami, Ace Attorney, Onimusha, and Mega Man in the slide for what the company calls its "next engine of growth." The publisher said the lineup will be nurtured through "new IP, sequels, remakes, ports," and added that it is also considering movies, TV shows, arcades, esports, and character licensing for these properties. That puts Dead Rising back in the conversation for the first time in years.

The last mainline entry, Dead Rising 4, shipped on Xbox One in 2016 and completed its DLC and PS4 port in 2017. Capcom expected the game to sell two million copies and did not break one. Capcom Vancouver, the studio that made the third and fourth games, was shuttered in 2018. The IP went quiet until 2024, when Capcom released Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster, an upgraded version of the original 2006 game, on modern platforms including PS5. The remaster was well received by critics, though some longtime fans were unhappy that Capcom did not bring back original voice actor T.J. Rotolo as Frank West and adjusted certain character designs from the original game.

Reactions to the earnings report mention have split along expected lines. IGN highlighted two X posts that capture the divide. "Dead Rising? Seriously? The franchise should stay dead after how much of a disaster Dead Rising 4 was," one fan wrote on X. Another, in the opposite camp, replied with the canon Dead Rising line: "We used to pray for times like this." Capcom did not name Dead Rising 5 or any specific new project in the report. The brand mention is the entire signal so far.

The background on how the series got here helps explain why fans are sceptical. The original Dead Rising launched in 2006 on Xbox 360, an Xbox-exclusive Capcom IP that traded on improvised weapons, survivor escorts, and harsh in-game time limits. DualShockers described it as a more comical companion to Resident Evil's self-serious horror, and noted that, between sequels, a comic called Road To Fortune, three non-theatrical movies released first on Xbox Live and later on Crackle, and a poorly received mobile game, the franchise climbed to become Capcom's 6th highest-grossing brand at its peak. Dead Rising 3 was the best-selling entry, launched as an Xbox One exclusive in 2013, and ended with a cure for zombification, which the studio then had to write around for Dead Rising 4 with a new outbreak storyline.

I think the cure ending in Dead Rising 3 is the single biggest reason the franchise stalled creatively, because it forced Capcom Vancouver to either rewrite the world or contradict it, and Dead Rising 4 chose a third option that satisfied no one: explain the new outbreak with a callback to the original lead scientist while keeping the tone broader and more comedic than any prior numbered entry. Frank West's character became another flashpoint. In the spin-off Off The Record, Frank was rewritten as a fallen-star photojournalist chasing fame off the back of a new outbreak. That same characterisation carried into Dead Rising 4, where Rotolo was replaced and the line delivery shifted to a different performer. Rotolo has said publicly that Capcom never approached him with an offer.

Internal development on a fifth entry did happen. Former Capcom Vancouver developer Marie Mejerwall told Game Reactor last year that she worked on Dead Rising 5 before its cancellation, on the NPC team responsible for boss fights, and that the game was being built on Unreal Engine 5.

"What I loved about Dead Rising 5, as it was canceled, I was on the NPC team, so I made all the boss fights. And I loved the variation, the tiers of the enemies. So we both had the typical kind of zombies that are not very intellegent, that will grab you. But then we also have a little bit more advanced, semi-more advanced enemies. What Dead Rising does really well, that I really loved, is they have the mini-bosses. And it becomes a kind of tenant unit. Whereas the biggest bosses that I also worked on, they already had their unique arenas. And it could be stuff like one boss fight that I designed was in a temple environment, where over the course of the fight, the temple breaks down more and more. And it gets more and more intense. And the boss gets more and more angry doing more and more stuff. So we really had a wide range of different enemy types. And richer variation. It was really fun to work on that game, and I'm really sad that it never got to see the light of day."

— Marie Mejerwall

That version of the cancelled Dead Rising 5 was reportedly set in a fictional Mexican city and would have brought back Chuck Greene and his daughter Katey, with the pair tangling with a drug cartel and the undead while hunting Zombrex. The project was shelved when Capcom Vancouver was closed in 2018, and nothing of it has been salvaged publicly since.

The current rumour points in a different direction. As we reported earlier, the Dead Rising Game might be in development, with MP1st sourcing claims that a new entry has been in active development since 2023 under the codename Rec. According to that report, Frank West will return as the protagonist in a direct sequel to the 2006 original, set in Hollywood and built around an "extravagant and deranged film director" who forces Frank and other survivors into staged trials so he can shoot "his so called 'perfect movie.'" The same report suggested that the time limit and photo-taking mechanics from the early games would return. Capcom has not confirmed any of that.

PushSquare picked up on the same details after the leading-brands slide appeared, noting that the IP had been quiet long enough that any signal from Capcom counted as movement. The earnings deck explicitly lists ports, remakes, and sequels among the routes the company is willing to take. A Dead Rising 2 remake has been floated as a more likely near-term project than Dead Rising 5, on the basis that Capcom has already used the Deluxe Remaster pipeline once and would presumably want to recoup that investment across at least one more entry.

The Resident Evil benchmark is the part of the conversation Capcom appears to have invited. Resident Evil 6 effectively shut down the mainline series creatively before Resident Evil 7 reset the brand from first person, and Resident Evil Requiem, released this year, has sold 7 million copies and been rated as one of 2026's best games. Capcom's recent pattern has been to take its worst-performing legacy brands offline, restructure them, then bring them back on a smaller scope and with a different studio leading. Street Fighter went through the same cycle between 5 and 6. Mega Man 11 exists because the company allowed itself to make a smaller, polished sequel rather than chase a blockbuster.

I see the leading brands slide as the most concrete sign Capcom is willing to do the Dead Rising version of that turnaround, because the company has now publicly grouped the IP with brands it has actively spent money on, rather than with the long list of properties it has let sit. That does not guarantee a sequel. It does guarantee that internal pitches for one have to be taken seriously, instead of ending in the same drawer as the cancelled Mexican-city project. Capcom's report frames any new spend on these IPs as part of a "next engine of growth" plan, which is the kind of language that pushes producers to deliver pitches the executive team can compare directly to Resident Evil's numbers.

Whether the Hollywood game described by MP1st is the same one Capcom is referring to remains an open question. Dead Rising 5, in its 2017 form, is gone. The codename Rec project, if it is real, is a different game with a different protagonist, a different setting, and likely a different lead studio. Capcom Vancouver no longer exists, and the publisher has not named the team behind any current Dead Rising work. Fans, by contrast, have already started reading the slide as a confirmation of a sequel, even though the company has explicitly described the wording as covering ports and remakes as well.

The list of franchises around Dead Rising in the slide also matters. Okami is getting a sequel after a long gap, Onimusha is back with Way of the Sword, Mega Man got Mega Man Dual Override, and Dragon's Dogma had a recent mainline entry. Each of those was once dormant, and each got at least one new title once Capcom decided the brand was worth investing in again. Dead Rising joining that list is the most public signal the company has given since the 2024 Deluxe Remaster that it intends to do more than relicense the back catalogue.

Read also, Capcom cut some features in Resident Evil Requiem, including merchants, side quests, and more.