Resident Evil Requiem passes $500m - and a discount sold it better than a blockbuster film

A record-breaking film in cinemas, a massive marketing push, and still the thing that actually got people to buy Resident Evil Requiem was a lower price tag. I can't say I'm surprised.

According to estimates from Alinea Analytics, Requiem has crossed $500m in revenue with around 8.5 million players across PS5, Steam and Xbox. That makes it the fastest Resident Evil game to hit the mark, and it's closing in on the Resident Evil 4 remake, which is said to have made more than $600m over three years. Capcom's winning streak simply continues.

The interesting bit is the experiment that happened almost by accident. Capcom cut prices on September 10, eight days before Zach Cregger's new Resident Evil film reached cinemas. That gave the analysts two clean windows at the same price: discount without the movie, and discount with the movie. The discount alone lifted daily PS5 sales of Requiem about 1.8 times. The film's record opening weekend? Requiem's daily PS5 revenue actually dipped by around 4%.

The film did drive people towards the older games - RE2 and RE4 saw a noticeable bump in copies on PS5 - but mostly at bargain-bin prices of around ten dollars. Lots of engagement, not much money per sale. On Steam the movie effect was modest across the board.

Why this matters for players here

In our region a full-price new release is a real chunk of a monthly budget, so this is how most people I know actually buy games: they wait. The numbers now show that isn't just a local habit - it's how the wider market behaves too. Hype makes you curious; the price decides when you pay.

There's also a nice detail for physical fans. Of the roughly 4 million PS5 copies, about 30% were discs, which works out to around 1.2 million boxed copies. Discs aren't dead, and for players here that matters twice: a disc can be lent to a friend, traded in or sold second-hand once you've finished the campaign, which quietly lowers the real cost of the game.

Platform split is no shock either - PS5 around 48%, Steam around 43%, and Xbox under 9%. Anyone still waiting for Requiem to hit a good sale can take comfort in one thing: Capcom has just learned that discounts work better than cinema tickets, so another one is hardly unlikely.

Image: Sonson2 / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DualSense_Controller_Chroma_Pearl.jpg