Resident Evil 7 gets 10 million sales target Survival horror game missed launch window expectations, but Capcom believes lifetime cumulative sales can measure up to those of Resident Evils 4, 5, and 6

Brendan Sinclair North American Editor Tuesday 16th May 2017 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Capcom

Resident Evil 7 fell short of its initial sales forecast, but Capcom has high hopes for the survival game to enjoy a healthy run as a catalog title. In a post-earnings Q&A posted on its investor relations site today, Capcom said it wants to see Resident Evil 7 post lifetime sales figures of 10 million units.

From its January debut through the end of the March, Resident Evil 7 shipped 3.5 million copies. Last November, the publisher told investors it planned to sell 4 million copies in the same time frame. Despite the shortfall, Capcom suggested that Resident Evil 7 and another early 2017 release--Monster Hunter XX, which shipped 1.7 million copies in its first two weeks--were both doing well.

"It is a solid start, considering the short span between launch and fiscal year end. Further, unit sales for both titles continue to grow even now," the company said. "What is more, the re-releases of Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 for current generation platforms are an example of successfully leveraging our library of assets; and they shipped a total of 2.8 million units during the fiscal year.

"The lifecycle for games is growing longer, driven by ongoing digital sales; as a result, Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 have each sold more than 7.5 to 10 million units cumulatively (including catalog and re-release sales). As such, we will work to achieve 10 million cumulative lifetime unit sales for Resident Evil 7 as well."

Judging by Capcom's list of million-selling titles, none of the Resident Evil games have yet reached the 10 million sales milestone. The original release of Resident Evil 5 is Capcom's best-selling title ever but has only sold 7.2 million copies. Resident Evil 6 is second all-time with 6.8 million copies, and Resident Evil 4's iterations on GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Wii combined to sell 5.9 million copies.

As for the current-gen re-releases of those games, Resident Evil 6 reached 1 million (bringing that game's cumulative total to 7.8 million sold), so it can be assumed given the above 2.8 million figure between the trio that the 4 and 5 re-releases are each sitting at roughly 900,000 units sold, again not enough to put either title close to the 10 million mark yet.