Resident Evil Village shipped a ton of copies in its first weekend, making it one of the best selling games in the franchise already. Resident Evil Village has been a highly anticipated game for quite some time, thanks to the success of the soft-reboot that was Resident Evil 7 and the recent remakes of older titles.
The franchise has had a strong resurrection after panned games like Resident Evil 6, resulting in rave reviews for Resident Evil Village. The eighth mainline entry in the series continues the trajectory of 7 by doubling down on the first-person perspective and allowing for new kinds of horror beyond the typical zombie action that the early games in the series provided. This not only garnered a whole new audience for the series, but kept many old fans interested in the new direction of the franchise.
Capcom (via Collider) revealed that in a matter of just four days, Resident Evil Village has shipped 3 million copies across its various platforms, pushing the series total to over 100 million. It's not clear how many have sold through, but it's impressive nonetheless because it speaks to how high demand is for the new game. If every copy was sold at $60 (there were various special editions of the game), it would mean Resident Evil Village has already made a whopping $180 million. For comparison, Resident Evil 7, which launched in 2017, has shipped 8.5 million units as of December 2020.
Resident Evil Village's Lady Dimitrescu has been an easy way to market the game, so much so that Domino's Pizza started using her to market their pizzas. The viral nature of the tall vampire lady has allowed word of the game to spread like wildfire across the internet, giving it a big reputation. It's also likely that dropping the number from the title and just calling it Resident Evil Village instead of Resident Evil 8 helped out, as newcomers wouldn't be intimidated about having to play catch up on seven other games that are largely inconsequential to the current title.
Capcom has yet to make any official announcements regarding a sequel, but it's likely that more is on the way. Rumors suggest Resident Evil Village is the middle chapter of a trilogy and Resident Evil 9 has already been in development for some time. Whether or not the next game will be able to maintain this momentum without a tall, flirty vampire remains to be seen, but Capcom's reputation over the last year has been tremendously positive and bodes well for the future.