I had a feeling Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil movie was exactly what the franchise needed, and now data from Alinea Analytics proves it: several Resident Evil games have received a nice sales boost, especially on PS5, after Capcom unleashed some well-timed discounts when the film released this month. While Capcom discounts helped encourage the surge, Resident Evil film lead Austin Abrams' screaming face sweetened the deal.
Alinea head of market analysis Rhys Elliott explains in a September 25 Substack post, Cregger's perfectly obscene Resident Evil movie about a medical courier (Abrams) stupidly getting stuck in Raccoon City after dark had "the biggest opening in the 24-year history of Resi films." It's also the most successful video game movie yet with 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and its biohazardous blockbuster effect is spreading to the Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes.
When ignoring Capcom's franchise-wide discounts, data suggests Cregger's movie directly influenced a 64% and 54% uptick in PS5 sales for RE2 and RE4, respectively.
"On Steam, the same movie effect is a much milder +11% to +14%," says Elliott.
In terms of pure player count, which would also include people who own the game jumping back in after the movie's release, "Resident Evil 2's remake jumped +48%" in daily players across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, says Elliott, as the game went from about 78,000 daily active users to nearly 116,000. Its price was chopped into bits, from $39.99 to lucky $7.99.
Cregger told GamesRadar+ his Resident Evil movie – which doesn't feature any characters from the games – unfolds "on the periphery" of Resident Evil 2's t-Virus outbreak, so it also makes sense that Resident Evil 2 benefits from it most. The 2019 remake's sales "nearly doubled on PS5," Elliott adds.
Meanwhile, Resident Evil 3 remake's daily players are up 25%, and Resident Evil 4 remake's player count lifted 24%. The new Resident Evil Requiem got a tinier bump with only a 20% daily player increase after Cregger's movie and Capcom discounts, but it didn't necessarily need the help – Elliott says, "Revenue-wise, [Requiem is] outpacing every other game in the franchise and will certainly leapfrog the Resident Evil 4 remake's $600M+ when all is said and done."
"Almost all the copy movement was on PlayStation," Elliott reminds us. Resident Evil players don't care about their Steam points, or maybe it's just that the franchise has been associated with PlayStation since its macabre beginning in 1998. But now that the Resident Evil franchise finally has a film that made me laugh and white-knuckle my popcorn bucket with equal intensity, there's no telling where it goes next.
Resident Evil has some other movie gems – just see our list of the best Resident Evil movies ranked.
