We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Resident Evil 7 is now Capcom’s fifth best-selling game ever, with 5.1 million sold

Resident Evil 7 sales

Update, April 6, 2018: Capcom have announced a major new sales milestone for RE7.

Resident Evil 7 has hit a new sales milestone, and it’s an especially notable one. Capcom have announced that the game has sold 5.1 million units as of March 31, making it the fifth best-selling game in the company’s history.

Zombies might be a thing of RE’s past, but you can get your fix with the best zombie games on PC.

Notably, that makes it the best-selling horror-focused entry in the RE series, only beaten out by the more action-packed stylings of 5 and 6, both of which have had years more time to continue picking up sales. Here’s the Capcom’s all-time top ten, per their corporate website, accurate up to December 2017 for older games updated with more recent numbers for current titles like Monster Hunter: World.

  • Monster Hunter: World – 7.5 million+
  • Resident Evil 5 – 7.3 million
  • Resident Evil 6 – 7.1 million
  • Street Fighter II – 6.3 million
  • Resident Evil 7 – 5.1 million
  • Resident Evil 2 – 4.96 million
  • Monster Hunter Freedom 3 – 4.9 million
  • Monster Hunter X – 4.3 million
  • Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate – 4.2 million
  • Monster Hunter 4 – 4.1 million

Of course, the double-billing with Monster Hunter 4 indicates a caveat to Capcom’s reckoning, since they track new iterations of old games by individual title. Street Fighter II would be much higher if those revisions were counted, and even Resident Evil 4 would be high with over 7 million sold across various platforms.

Even with some creative math involved, it’s still an impressive story for a risky return to horror in RE7. Though, admittedly, the strong records from 5 and 6 mean that public sentiment toward these games doesn’t necessarily reflect their sales trajectory that much.

Update, November 6:Capcom’s mid-year financials suggest solid performances from RE7 and MVC:I, but their strongest performers aren’t on PC.

Even though Resident Evil 7 met its sales goal more than few months later than expected, Capcom highlight its success as part of their second-quarter financial report, confirming that the horror game has exceeded four million copies sold. They also highlight Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite’s release as a contributor their financials, though they’re much less specific about the fighter’s performance.

Nonetheless, Capcom have had a solid year, with a 17.6% increase in net sales and a 191.5% increase in net income year-over-year. While the launch of a major new fighting game and the continued sales of RE7 have been anchors for their year, the true success has been with smaller games on Nintendo platforms. The Switch port of Street Fighter II has been a “smash hit,” while continued sales of Monster Hunter XX on 3DS and Switch have been strong.

This puts Capcom in an interesting position, with solid but uninspiring sales for games across PC and more powerful consoles, but surprising success from ported, portable titles. Of course, we’ll have to wait for the release of Monster Hunter: World before making too much of the difference between strategies.

Original story, October 18: Resident Evil 7 was pretty tremendous, and even if it may have been a clear “me too” in the wake of the success of PT and modern indie style of horror, it proved a solid return to scares for the franchise. But while the game was great, it hasn’t hit the sales goals Capcom had set for it. Until now, anyway.

The game finally hit its targeted four million copies shipped, according to a fresh stamp now visible on the game’s website. This goal was supposed to be met at the end of Capcom’s fiscal year on March 31. Meeting it seven months later certainly isn’t the success Capcom have been looking for (certainly why it’s not part of a larger official announcement), but it would be more than a stretch to call RE7 a failure.

In fact, RE7 is now the fourth best-selling entry in the franchise according to Capcom’s own sales figures, just behind the venerable classic Resident Evil 2. The first and second places on the list might come as more of a suprise, with RE5 and the maligned RE6 taking those two slots.

It’s tough to say what all this means for the futures of Resident Evil. Around the time of the game’s release, Capcom said they saw RE7 as the start of a new direction for the franchise, and that RE8 would continue with the first-person perspective at the very least.

The Gold Edition of RE7 will package the game and its DLC just in time for the horror-filled holiday of, er, Christmas with a December 12 release date. It’ll be interesting to see if this new package will do anything to improve the game’s post-release window sales, but it seems to be missing the holiday it’s best suited for.