Capcom is confident that Resident Evil 7 will sell upwards of four million copies on its first day of release, the publisher’s EMEA marketing director Antoine Molant has told MCV. “Commercially, [Resident Evil 7] is probably the biggest Capcom game we are releasing on the new machines,” says Molant, adding that “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.
With Capcom keeping current pre-order numbers for Resident Evil 7 a secret, the only way of discerning the likelihood of the survival horror title reaching its goal is by dredging up the numbers from past entries in the series. As per VideoGamer, lifetime sales of Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 currently stand at 7.1 million and 6.6 million respectively, meaning next year’s entry will need to perform considerably better than its predecessors to meet Capcom’s goal.
[zergpaid]However, Molant doesn’t seem particularly concerned, telling MCV that “Aal 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.” In fact, Molant says that, even before the announcement of the collector’s edition, pre-orders were “quite above what we were expecting.” There’s certainly no shortage of confidence at Capcom HQ then, but we won’t know the final verdict until next year.
Resident Evil 7 launches for Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4 on January 24, 2017. Those of you on the latter platform can get a taste of the horrors that await you in the Baker Mansion right now by downloading the Beginning Hour demo. Capcom says the trial will be available on other platforms later this month.