Resident Evil Village sold a lot of copies in its first weekend, making it one of the franchise’s best-selling titles. Because of the popularity of Resident Evil 7’s soft reboot and recent remakes of older games, Resident Evil Village has been a widely anticipated game for quite some time.
Since panned games like Resident Evil 6, the franchise has had a successful comeback, with Resident Evil Village receiving rave reviews. The eighth mainline entry in the series builds on the success of the previous installments by doubling down on the first-person viewpoint and allowing for new types of horror beyond the usual zombie violence seen in the series’ early installments. This attracted a young generation to the series and held many loyal viewers excited about the franchise’s new direction.
Resident Evil Village has shipped 3 million copies across all platforms in just four days, bringing the series’ cumulative sales to over 100 million, according to Capcom (via Collider). It’s unclear how many have been released, but it’s amazing nonetheless because it shows how popular the new game is.
Resident Evil Village has now made a staggering $180 million if any copy was sold for $60 (there were numerous limited versions of the game). In addition, as of December 2020, Resident Evil 7, which was released in 2017, has sold 8.5 million units.
Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village has proven to be an effective marketing tool for the game, to the point that Domino’s Pizza has begun to use her to promote their pizzas. The tall vampire lady’s viral nature has caused word of the game to spread like wildfire across the internet, earning it a large following.
It’s also possible that excluding the number from the title and simply naming it Resident Evil Village instead of Resident Evil 8 helped, as newcomers wouldn’t be put off by the prospect of having to catch up with seven other games that are completely unrelated to the current title.
Capcom has yet to make any public news about a sequel, but one is almost certainly on the way. Resident Evil Village is rumored to be the middle chapter of a trilogy, and Resident Evil 9 has been in production for quite some time. It remains to be seen if the next game will retain this momentum without a big, flirty vampire, but Capcom’s recent reputation has been very positive, which bodes well for the future.
