A little over a month after Capcom announced its excellent Resident Evil Requiem had surpassed 6m copies sold – officially making it the fastest-selling game in the survival horror series’ 30-year history – it looks like another major milestone has been reached.
Resident Evil Requiem’s previous mega-milestone of 6m sales was officially trumpeted by Capcom president and COO Haruhiro Tsujimoto back in March – the news even got its own press release and everything. A month on, Requiem has seemingly managed to shift another million copies, with this latest update arriving a little less bombastically, courtesy of Requiem director Koshi Nakaishi
Nakaishi recently took to Instagram with an image of the team celebrating Requiem hitting the 7m mark – and, yes, there was cake. “Grace, congratulations on 7m,” reads one, engulfed in white icing and crowned with oozing blood – from which the FBI agent emerges brandishing a gun. As for Leon, he got his own cake to pop his head out of, this one swathed in black icing and emblazoned with the words “Welcome to 7m Leon”. Oh, and Leon, man of refined taste that he is, also got a couple of strawberries to top it all off.
For comparison (sales-wise, not cake-wise), Resident Evil 7 and Resident Village – Capcom’s two most recent new mainline series entries prior to Requiem – have amassed around 16.4 and 13.5m sales since 2017 and 2021 respectively. So the fact Requiem managed to smash through the 5m sales barrier in less than a week and has just kept going makes it easy to appreciate just how well Requiem has performed.
Its success is well-deserved too. I called Requiem “both a masterful bit of suffocating horror and a nostalgic, fan-thrilling victory lap for the legendary series” in my five star review. And, of course, while it successfully closes one chapter of Leon’s story, it cheekily opens another. Fans have been in full-on speculation mode following the discovery that Leon – if the ring on his finger is any indication – appears to now be married. But who’s the lucky boy/girl/undead mutant? Capcom’s remaining tight-lipped for now.