It looks like Capcom is putting a lot of faith in Resident Evil 7 as it expects the title to sell at least 10 million units during its lifetime, according to a recent post-earnings Q&A the company posted on its investor relations site.
Since the game’s launch in January until the end of the last fiscal year, which ended on March 31, 2017, Resident Evil 7 has sold over 3.5 million copies. That’s half-a-million less than what Capcom expected to sell in the same time frame but the company still believes the game sold 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.
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.
It seems that 10 million units is a bit of a high number considering none of the publisher’s titles have yet to reach it, with its best-selling title Resident Evil 5 only selling 7.2 million copies so far since its launch back in 2009. But the company seems confident it can achieve its goal by generating further buzz for the game via promotional activities as well as DLC.
[Source: Capcom via Games Industry]
