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.
------
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