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Capcom targeting 4m day 1 sales for Resident Evil 7

Unless it was Rebecca that is.

The idea of making a game somehow more scary by playing as a character who is just some regular, scare-prone guy is silly, either way. I don't understand Capcom's rationale behind it. RE works because its protagonists are heroic and fearless despite the nightmare scenarios and overwhelming odds.

I know personally I prefer a new character. Because to me it's jarring in a later title to have less moves than what I had prior. If I was playing chris and not Meleeing people I would be pissed.
 
Soma has done at least half a million at this point and that had no brand recognition, didn't launch on three platforms simultaneously and hasn't had the demo / YouTube PR nor backing of a still major studio.

Amnesia was a similarly low key title and did just under a million in a year just on PC and Mac after launch.

Some of you guys are insane in your guesstimates

As a horror enthusiast, I also am noticing an over-abundance of people playing down the horror genre, forgetting the horror genre died out not because of sales but publisher direction to chase hollywood and trends, and horror isn't -just- some niche thing, there's a reason there's so many horror movies that do well and Horror Games have caught on a lot with a casual audience on YouTube or how the RE franchise even got big in the first place, there's a lot of factors here but I think some people are severely underestimating some factors at play here.

Horror games have been indie dependent for so long simply because bigger publishers left the space after the PS2 era to chase the newest trends, which weren't horror games at the time but action games after, ironically, RE4 shook things up. Resident Evil 4 wasn't the first action game, nor was RE1 the first horror game, but they managed to capture an audience and leave a mark for other developers to follow.

We will see if Capcom can pull it off a third time or not.
 
No matter what you or anyone says, nothing changes the fact that this isn't the official sales target, which is 4m by March 31, 2017.



No mainline numbered RE title outside of REmake and RE 0 have sold sub-4m lifetime.

This is me admitting I just read the pages of reactions instead of reading the article better and not looking for official projections, but you speak the truth. I think by march it's doable across three platforms.
 
I feel like the Capcom rep has either been misquoted here or has confused their timescale for this--there's no way anyone with any industry knowledge expects any game to sell 4million units day one.

At the same time, a lot of you are writing horror off as a niche genre when in reality it's probably the genre fiction with the widest appeal. Just because the videogame industry wrote horror off for a generation doesn't change the fact that Resident Evil has always been a multi-million selling franchise, even before it went the more actiony route.
 
I think Ethan will end up a badass after going through the Baker house, ending with killing the final boss with one liners and stuff, its only a matter of time.
Anywayz, good to see they are diversifying their character roster it was needed.going from the typical B.O.W/S.T.A.R.S stuff is a breath of fresh air

The ending of the game will probably pan out so you can see Ethan wearing a stars uniform
 
I feel like the Capcom rep has either been misquoted here or has confused their timescale for this--there's no way anyone with any industry knowledge expects any game to sell 4million units day one.

At the same time, a lot of you are writing horror off as a niche genre when in reality it's probably the genre fiction with the widest appeal. Just because the videogame industry wrote horror off for a generation doesn't change the fact that Resident Evil has always been a multi-million selling franchise, even before it went the more actiony route.

Timescale is 100% confused here as been said a few times in the topic, 4 million units was said to be the financial goal for the first fiscal year months ago (which would be about two months and a week from when RE7 releases, RE7 releases January 24th, fiscal year ends March 31st.).
 
Timescale is 100% confused here as been said a few times in the topic, 4 million units was said to be the financial goal for the first fiscal year months ago (which would be about two months and a week from when RE7 releases).

Yeah, that seems much more reasonable.
 
Capcom's best selling game is RE5 7m units, this has to be a miss quote, you expect to reach more than half of your best selling game ever in one day? moving 4mil units in one day is GTA level sales...Capcom's not on Rockstar level..
 
Capcom's best selling game is RE5 7m units, this has to be a miss quote, you expect to reach more than half of your best selling game ever in one day? moving 4mil units in one day is GTA level sales...Capcom's not on Rockstar level..

GTAV sold 11.2 million copies its first day on sale.
 
Well, they can predict all the numbers they want as long as they don't blame consumers when sales don't meet expectations.

The game will no doubt do good over time but those are some crazy expectations IMO.
 
Sounds a bit ambitious, but who knows. The new Jovovich movie will debut along the game, so they might hope that some of the audience crosses.
 
Capcom's best selling game is RE5 7m units, this has to be a miss quote, you expect to reach more than half of your best selling game ever in one day? moving 4mil units in one day is GTA level sales...Capcom's not on Rockstar level..

It's apparently 4M units by their end of fiscal year (Mar 31st), and Capcom only talks about shipments.

Edit: I think that the Resident Evil brand is strong enough to at least ship 2.5-3M units by March. 4M does seem high though, given that this game doesnt seem to have nearly as much hype.
 
I think I might link this thread in the community OT for posterity's sake.

Don't just lol, let's hear your number

 
Why is Capcom so delusional?

When the game performs way below that, they would argue Console gaming is dead and that they don't want to release more games etc...

PD.- Seems I'm a slow reader, so it's 4m overall?
 
This coupled with Capcom making shit people don't want are why they are in the shit position to begin with.

But there are people who do want this. Especially those who take more than 5 seconds to see it isn't a typical FPH clone.

And again, 4 million by March 31st (2 months and a week), in a series where even Remasters of classic entries can break 1 million with no marketing push.
 
If they expect this the first few months then it's possible. RE is extremely popular. At least it seems that they're just focusing on making the best game that they can make even if people aren't messing with the new direction.
 
But there are people who do want this. Especially those who take more than 5 seconds to see it isn't a typical FPH clone.

And again, 4 million by March 31st (2 months and a week), in a series where even Remasters of classic entries can break 1 million with no marketing push.
Wasn't referring to this game, more so the reason why Capcom is in it's current situation.
 
What? 4 million only on the first day... lol
As much as I love RE that won't happen, even for the first month that number seems far fetched.
 
4 million units by March still seems a bit too ambitious to me. And truthfully, it doesn't feel like many people are even taking that much about RE7. Sure, I'm excited, but in general it seems like the hype for this game, along with other Capcom titles, isn't all that high.
 
This is the kind of sales target you reveal to investors but not to the public. It's just setting up for later disappointment.

I imagine they have some kind of metric to get this sales goal and it's much less ridiculous then FFXV selling 10 million copies ( that one might sell 6 million ... by the end of 2017) but , it would have sounded better to say "we would love for 4 million copies of RE7 to move at launch ". It's also maybe the case that they plan to ship 4 million copies world wide by the end of their fiscal year ?

Either way - this gaming business is going to need a massive rethink if 2 million + is the new minimum requirement. Probably why Konami just bowed out outside of catalog re-releases. How do you make money if you aren't already one of the big "games as a service" out there ?

The resident evil brand hasn't had a genuinely great new entry since 2005 , certainly the RE1 re-release did quite well but look at RE0 , released a year later to almost no fan fare.

Now you've got what is basically just a VR horror title being passed off as a new entry because PT was well received and Capcom don't want to just reboot the franchise from nothing ... because those remasters were still popular so it's easier to throw the name around. But... Who is this game even making happy ?

I mean, on the other hand I get it - they tried to make an RE6 by just throwing money at the problem , lots of money. Tons , bucketloads of cash. Just to get the game out in a super tight time frame , they even tried to cover all the bases by have an RE2 style section, an RE4/call of duty style section and an oddball action-y style section but in their attempt to please everyone ... no one ended up happy with it.

What I'm getting at it is - how do they expect sales to be so high out of the gate when RE6 is remembered largely for being really really bad and every bit of RE7 material makes it look like it's more of a REino (resident evil in name only). The hardcore fans won't care so there goes those sales and I don't think newcomers to the franchise will make up the difference so , in the end you'll have a game that sells substantially worse than the previous entry.

That is .. unless it happens to be incredible. I have no interest in playing the demos myself and full disclosure - I'm terribly biased towards this game. The only RE related project I've wanted since 2002 is a remake of RE2 that looks as good as the remake of RE1 ... and I might just get that come 2018. I just hope IF RE7 IS successful they don't turn it into a first person horror title.

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Now for my more usual fiscal reporting - This is a japanese made game as far as I can tell so development costs are equal to roughly 50,000 USD per person per year. Most games of this stature take 36 months to create right now and I'd like to think after the huge budget of RE6 didn't actually lead to more profits (just more revenue) that RE7 has far less staff - say 100 people ? It's not exactly an amazing looking game either. So that means 100 people X 50K a year X 3 years = 15 million in development costs at minimum. It's entirely possible that as much as 200 people worked on it which would mean 30 million dollars tops. Let's meet about halfway and say 24 million. From there you've got marketing , which if the game is a lower budget like this - well that might be as much money at most so let's say maybe 48 million dollars. That 60$ game nets a retailer 10$ , cost of printing disc / case/shipping is about 5$ a copy and licensing fees (to sony in this case) are another 20$. For those keeping track at home that means 35$ revenue , digital sales might be 40$ by skipping the disc but throwing a game up on a digital store front still gives that "retailer" a cut. That means you need to sell 1 million copies to make 35 million in revenue. So, if RE7 cost 48 million to make and market , that means it needs to sell roughly 1.4 million copies to break even. To make investors happy I'd wager it would need to do 50% more than that but preferably even 100% more so that means 2.1-2.8 million sold and this game will be a "success". The second fiscal goal would be to make enough money to fund another game without a need for a new round of investor cash (after giving them a nice return so they leave their money in your business) SO , that 4 million sales target will likely accomplish this single-handedly and make everyone happy which is why they said it. 4 million sold at full price = 140 million in revenue.

My gut feeling for this game is that it might sell 1.5 million day one tops and if it's good maybe another million by the end of capcoms fiscal year (March 31st). So it'll do fine, but if 4 million is their current target ? ehhhh
 
Don't see how. This is a RE game that nobody asked for. Should have returned to pure horror but stuck to 4's perfect gameplay mechanics.
 
It's apparently 4M units by their end of fiscal year (Mar 31st), and Capcom only talks about shipments.

Edit: I think that the Resident Evil brand is strong enough to at least ship 2.5-3M units by March. 4M does seem high though, given that this game doesnt seem to have nearly as much hype.

Hum... I reeeeeeeally don't think that's accurate... Sales are usually estimated within the same fiscal year as the release, not the first day...
That thread title needs fixing
 
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