Resident Evil games are a big deal. People love them! Especially in Japan. Let’s see how the latest release did in its first week on sale in the country.
Resident Evil 7 launched on January 26, and for the week between January 23 and January 29, it came in first in the Japanese sales charts, with the game’s PS4 release selling 187,306 copies.
While this data was published by Japanese game site 4Gamer, it comes from the highly respected sales-tracker Media Create. The Xbox One version did not make the sales chart’s top 20, and thus 4Gamer was unable to post those sales numbers.
So, first place! This is good, right? Well…
As Kotaku reported in 2012, the PlayStation 3 version of RE6 sold 634,933 and 92,921 in its first two weeks of sale, for a total of 727,854 copies sold. In comparison, 2009’s Resident Evil 5 moved 319,000 copies in its first week and 61,483 in its second for a total of 380,483.
Meaning, unless Resident Evil 7 has a big second week, it will be underperforming. Stay tuned.
Comments
10 responses to “Let’s See How Resident Evil 7 Is Doing In Japan”
Kinda what happens when you milk a series to shit, have one good game (5) then drop a mega deuce (giraffe fellatio). People naturally doubt the series. Do both us and yourself (capcom) a favour and prove that this title is a stepping stone something even better and maybe the next release will not suffer such a poor debut.
Hahaha. ‘Magic deuce’!
I hated 5 though. Hated it with a passion. I hadn’t played since 2 though so I guess I lost touch with what it had evolved into.
Definitely grabbing 7 when it drops in price though.
As a standalone game 5 was at the very least interesting, 6 wasn’t even that. It was a smouldering hunk of shite.
Japanese market hsn’t been big on any FPS as far as I’m aware (understand that RE7 is more FP Survival horror). So I’m not all that surprised it isn’t a mega hit over there.
They have to regain goodwill after 6. I’m a massive RE fan and I can honestly say that re6 is the only mainline entry I completely despise. It was a monumental failure to me.
RE7 is a quality game and it’s clear capcom have taken a risk in order to right some wrongs. They certainly didn’t have to since re6 made them a shit ton of money. But they are playing the long game. Another re6 would have tanked the series.
I think the core Japanese Res evil fans aren’t really fans about horror. They are more interested in the main characters and their antics who are basically “super” heroes. Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, Claire and Chris Redfield… and so forth.
I personally love the new approach Res 7 is, but to many Japanese long term fans, they probably aren’t interested because none of their lovable characters are in it. Also… Japanese were never really big fans on realism either, so bringing back Res 7 to it’s roots would have put off a few. They love their cliche story arcs and over the top villains. Not that its a bad thing, but Res 7 really isn’t any of that.
You are right about core fans liking the characters, but story and atmosphere are still important.
You play enough RE and easy jump scares are about the best that will get ya.
(It’s true, you give us Leon ‘Bad Arse Mofo’ Kennedy and every thing else might as well die out of fear and respect xD)
Still not sure how it’s returned to its roots though when it’s stepped away from them with something different. (And tethered it to the RE series)
Nothing wrong with trying something new, but the core fans are likely hesitant because it’s not really a RE game at heart.
(I blame a lot on Wesker getting iced, it was satisfying…ish, but it was literally the end of an era in the RE universe, tough to fill)
Trying to guess what’s happening in Japan is tough, it’s probably a combination of many of the reasons mentioned thoughout the comments, as well as the decline of console gaming in favour of mobile and hand held gaming.
Not a fair assessment of the numbers. You’re comparing the sales from a large PS3 userbase to the PS4 sales. It would be more telling to compare the percentage of sales to available userbase for comparison.
Percentages are meaningless though. Selling to 50% of the userbase could mean you sold to 1 of 2 people or you sold to 500 of 1000 people, or you sold to 2 million of 4 million people. Guess which one is the better sales figure. There’s more than enough Playstation 4s in Japanese homes to reach the same sales numbers as 5 and 6, it’s just that the market chose not to buy.
it simple just proves EVERY COMMENT YOU READ ONLINE IS NOT EVERYONES VOICE, you see well supposable most people online where like hey Capcom go back to the series roots, that what me want to they go back to the survival horror aspect, and look what happens, Capcom should of looked at the sales charts, because 5 and 6 well selling like hot cakes, and if this first week of sales is anything to go by, resident evil 2’s remake could see some changes if even released at all.