I went to Dall-E 3 to see what a modern take would be:
Nice. What prompt did you use?
OP, the scientific explanation is as follows:
Every single organization in the world, regardless of its size, has limited resources that they can employ to maximize profits or to attain their objectives (in case of the NGO). In the case of game development, for example, we can simplify it for explanation's sake as their development capacity. So, let's say that Capcom hasta the capacity of producing .4 games a year (2 games in 5 years) by investing 80 million dollars a year (400 over 5 years).
With that in mind they have to select what endeavor would provide the maximum profit. Let's quickly check how succesfull are Capcom's older IP's (which I'm aware don't necessarily reflect how popular could they be now but it's the only thing we have. Capcom probably has better tools like massive surveys, focus groups and deeper analytics):
In 1999 they released the following games:
Resident Evil 3 (3.5 million copies)
Power Stone (.14 million copies - VG Chartz, I know I know but it's the only source available)
Giga Wing (couldn't find any data but probably less than power stone)
SF III 3rd Strike (126,000 copies including both dreamcast and arcade Google)
Final Fight Revenge (Unknown but it inspired God Hand so it paid it's due)
The Misadventures of Tron (61,127 - Wikipedia it was actually the best sold game in Japan for a while)
Trick'N Snowboarder (Unknown but never heard of it so probably not many)
Metal Walker (Unknown but it was a quirky pokemon clone that didn't pan out so probably not many)
Dino Crisis (2.4 million copies)
Street Fighter III Double Impact (84, 398 Google)
Shiritsu Justice Gakuen: Nekketsu Seishun Nikki 2 (Unknown but it didn't get a release outside of Japan so probably not many)
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (5 million copies worldwide)
I'm lazy and supposed to be working so copies sold were pulled from GPT or some other doubtful sources.
So out of those releases the Top 3 are:
Tomb Raider: Last Revelation
Resident Evil 3
Dino Crisis
You might say: OK there you go, the other two still get some attention but Dino Crisis doesn't. However, Dino Crisis did get some sequels:
Dino Crisis 2 (1.2 million copies)
Dino Crisis 3 (580,000 copies - Fandom)
So, basically with every release sales cut in half. Going by that trend Dino Crisis 4 would likely not even break even.
So while maybe the latter games broke even, they failed to perform at a level that Capcom deemed reasonable continue developing the series.
So if you want a formula that could read scentificly you could use:
(Dino crisis 3 revenue - dino crisis 3 cost) < (DMC/RE revenue - DMC/RE cost)
While the above is true, Capcom will prefer to invest in DMC/RE.
I hope my scientific-ish explanation satisfied your thirst for knowledge.
