Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, out since January 24, takes the franchise in a completely different direction. Based on early figures, it's a gamble that appears to be paying dividends.
Capcom recently revealed that worldwide shipments of Resident Evil 7 topped 2.5 million units in its first three days on the market, pushing cumulative sales of games in the franchise past the 75 million mark since first launching way back in 1996. As such, Capcom said Resident Evil is now its flagship game series.
Results thus far shouldn't be all that surprising considering the game's demo was downloaded 7.15 million times, a record for the series.
Resident Evil 7 also stands out as one of the first AAA titles to be fully playable in virtual reality.
According to Capcom's ResidentEvil.net, more than 85,000 of the nearly 900,000 gamers that currently participate in Capcom's opt-in stats tracking platform are playing Resident Evil 7 using Sony's PlayStation VR headset (as you may know, Resident Evil 7 VR is a PlayStation VR exclusive for the first year). In other words, nearly one in 10 people are tackling the game via virtual reality.
In related news, Dark Side of Gaming is reporting that the latest version of anti-tamper tool Denuvo, which Capcom utilized with Resident Evil 7, has already been cracked. Considering that Bethesda, Crytek and Playdead all removed Denuvo from shipped games once they'd been cracked, it's entirely plausible that Capcom may soon do the same with Resident Evil 7 via software update.