It’s not just PC Gamer’s Elie Gould who loves the new Resident Evil. The ninth game in the series—not counting twice that number of spin-offs and remakes—has taken off like a rocket, selling more than five million copies since its release on February 27.
Resident Evil Requiem had the series’ biggest-ever launch on Steam by far, beating out Resident Evil 4 Remake’s launch numbers by some 100,000 concurrent players. That’s quite a feat for a singleplayer game, and as of this writing the game remains firmly in place at the top of Steam’s Global Top Sellers list. Well, okay, there are currently more people spending their entire paychecks on Counter-Strike 2 gun skins, but Requiem is the top paid game on the chart closing in on a week after launch.
While Resident Evil Requiem couldn’t keep pace with Monster Hunter Wilds’ astronomical launch sales of eight million copies in just three days, I have a feeling it may end up having the longer tail.
Regardless, it’s already one for Capcom’s history books. The publisher helpfully maintains a page of its all-time bestsellers, and Requiem’s first week of sales alone have earned it a spot in the top 20 list. Current numbers would slot it in between the original 1998 Resident Evil 2 (#19) and the HD-ified update of Resident Evil Remake, released in 2014 (#18). That means RE9 has already passed the lifetime sales of 2024’s Dragon’s Dogma 2, as well as dozens of Capcom classics.
Requiem has a long way to go to climb to the very top of the list. The first two spots are occupied by Monster Hunter: World and Rise, which have sold 22 million and 18.2 million, respectively. At number three and four are Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil 7, both in the 16 million sales range.
Can older but wiser Hot Uncle Leon Kennedy still put up the kind of numbers he managed in his youth? With Requiem blending the action and survival strains of Resident Evil so effectively, I think there’s a damn good chance.
