Capcom Projects RE 7 Sales to Pass 4M Units on Day One
By Kyle Sledge 12 December 2016
The video game developer and publisher Capcom believes the sales for its forthcoming survival-horror game Resident Evil 7 will pass 4 million units on day one.
About a month ago, Capcom announced a projection that Resident Evil 7 will have moved 4 million copies in sales around launch time. Now, it seems as if the video game developer and publisher are even more confident in the forthcoming survival-horror title’s financial success, as the company believes that the game will pass 4 million units in sales on day one of Resident Evil 7‘s availability.
When speaking to MCV (via VideoGamer), Capcom EMEA marketing director Antoine Molant explained that one reason behind the company’s belief in Resident Evil 7‘s ability to sell so well on its first day comes down to fans having placed plenty of pre-orders, as the numbers are “very good.” Not to mention, the developer’s marketing director also went on to say that the familiarity with the brand ought to translate into solid sales, with Resident Evil 7 being one of the major releases Capcom is making available for current generation platforms.
“Commercially, [Resident Evil 7] is probably the biggest Capcom game we are releasing on the new machines. Ideally, we’d love to sell 4m on Day One globally. That would be great. Looking at what we see in the pre-orders and trends these days, we’re pretty confident we are going to get there.
“All the signs that we have seen across the market, whether it’s from the UK or from other territories, are very positive so far. We’re not sitting back and relaxing at all because we want to push that. The confidence is there.
“Keeping in mind the real pre-order campaign started a week ago with the Steelbook announcement and some of the Collectors’ Edition announcement… before doing that, they were quite above what we were expecting. We’ve got the previews coming out and some more launching in December. On that front, we’re very happy.”
Beyond Capcom’s assessments for Resident Evil 7‘s day one sales, the feat is certainly attainable when one takes into account the success of other modern Triple-A titles. For example, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 15 became the fastest selling game in the series after it moved more than 5 million units on its release date.
Of course, when one takes into account the fact that the last two entries in the Resident Evil franchise have yet to even hit sales of 8 million, respectively, some might consider Capcom’s projection for the seventh installment to be rather ambitious. As it stands, Resident Evil 5‘s numbers to date are only at 7.1 million units, while Resident Evil 6 had sales below Capcom’s expectations with the game moving 6.6 million copies altogether.
While it remains to be seen if Resident Evil 7 can exceed the goal of selling more than 4 million units on its first day of availability, Capcom’s self-assurance is definitely a decent sign that the game will be a success, especially with the developer having tweaked the gameplay formula from previous entries. For instance, not only is the game to be played from a first-person perspective, but also the protagonist Ethan is not a highly trained hero in the vein of previous main characters like Chris Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy. Taking all of this into consideration, it will be interesting to find out how well Resident Evil 7 fares in the market at the beginning of next year when it finally releases.
Resident Evil 7 is set to launch on January 24, 2017 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR, and Xbox One.
