Resident Evil 2 remake overtakes RE5 as series' best seller

Capcom's latest quarterly earnings report has made the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 the best-selling game in the Resident Evil series, Polygon reports. The remake has now reached 19.75 million copies sold, moving it past Resident Evil 5, which Capcom's previous report listed at 19.01 million across its original release and its later remaster on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.

The reshuffle unseats a game that had held the top of the series chart for years. Resident Evil 5 arrived in 2009 and accumulated its total across two releases more than a decade apart. The Resident Evil 2 remake has been on sale since 2019, and Capcom's figures show it is still adding meaningful numbers quarter to quarter rather than having plateaued.

Resident Evil takes seven of Capcom's top ten

Resident Evil games occupied seven of the ten positions on Capcom's unit sales ranking for the quarter. Pragmata led the chart outright with 2.51 million copies in its debut quarter. The Resident Evil 4 remake followed at 2.43 million and Resident Evil 2 at 1.42 million, both of which Polygon characterised as long tails rather than launch spikes. Resident Evil 6, whose critical reception was considerably cooler than its predecessors', took tenth place with 710,000 sales.

Across its lifetime the Resident Evil series has sold 213 million units, which keeps it Capcom's highest-selling franchise by a wide margin. Monster Hunter sits second at 131 million and Street Fighter third at 60 million. Mega Man places fourth and Devil May Cry fifth, the latter carried in large part by Devil May Cry 5 and its 14.24 million sales.

What Capcom has lined up next

Capcom follows this year's Resident Evil: Requiem and Pragmata with Onimusha: Way of the Sword, due on Sept. 4. A remake of Resident Evil - Code: Veronica is scheduled for next year, and Zach Cregger's Resident Evil film is set for Sept. 18. Whether Resident Evil 5's own sales record earns it a remake is unsettled: Polygon noted that some observers expect one eventually, while citing rumours that no such project is planned at present.