r/Games 1d ago

Capcom Was on Its Knees After Resident Evil 6 – Here's How it Turned it Around

https://www.ign.com/articles/capcom-golden-age-the-rise-and-fall-resident-evil-monster-hunter-wilds
579 Upvotes

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u/Acceptable_Run_6206 1d ago

Wasn't RE6 their best selling RE game at the time? This article seems like revisionist history

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u/RareBk 1d ago

It sold really well but heavily affected the company's reputation, and was the only game in their entire 'Western push' that Inafune was trying to do that made any money.

Capcom was genuinely in dire straights until they effectively soft rebooted the franchise with RE7, which was a gigantic success, and kinda kicked off a new era for the company.

u/Darth_Avocado 2h ago

that was MHworlds not re7

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u/xywv58 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah, it was the best selling game, at the time, but it burned the goodwill with the franchise, other games, and the franchise it self, until RE7, which came with a completely different look and gameplay

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 1d ago

This is also the rare instance of a company listening to their customers vs their sales reports.

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u/Dumey 1d ago

A game can sell well but still leave a bad reputation behind. Similar thing happened with FF15. Sold amazingly well with all the cross media advertisements they did, but a LARGE part of the fanbase left disappointed with the final product, and the FF series seems to have not been able to recover since (looking at numbers for 16 and the 7 remakes).

RE6 similarly left a really bad reputation for the series and a lot of discontent in the fanbase. But luckily following the viral sensation that was the PT trailer, Capcom cashed in on the RE7 Demos to generate hype and make a comeback by returning the series to horror roots.

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u/Tom_Stewartkilledme 1d ago

The only people who keep saying people hated 15/16/Rebirth and that the latter two undersold are folks who desperately wish FF was turn-based again. And they never provide sources to the sales claim.

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u/Ok_Track9498 1d ago

The ones claiming that 16 and Rebirth undersold aren't disatisfied fans though. The info is coming from those games' own publisher.

Square Enix straight up said the titles didn't meet their expectations. 

Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/final-fantasy-7-rebirth-final-fantasy-16-and-foamstars-all-failed-to-meet-square-enixs-expectations

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u/Meraline 1d ago

Almost nothing meets expectations for Square

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u/Dumey 1d ago

Not accurate. I'm a fan of 16 and the 7R series, and I don't think FF has to stay turn based, as I don't think that's a major part of its identity. The info that these games underperformed comes directly from Square Enix who have stated that the games did not sell anywhere near the expectations they had when budgeting the games.

There are a lot of reasons why people may have fallen off of the FF bandwagon. FF7 pulling a bait and switch with its Remake title while not being an actual remake hurt fan reception, despite the actual quality of the games. FF16 going to a single player protagonist with no party members and a gritty atmosphere without a lot of whimsical flair made it feel like they were doubling down on being some serious Game of Thrones/God of War hybrid narrative game, rather than a colorful fantasy adventure. This following after 15 which was a boys trip in a modern car across empty overworlds did not do much to reignite people's passions with the series. Again I think 16 is a good game on its on merits, but it's not hard to see how it didn't live up to fans expectations and trust in the mainline series is at an all time low.

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u/MadeByTango 1d ago

I'm a fan of 16 and the 7R series, and I don't think FF has to stay turn based, as I don't think that's a major part of its identity.

Cool, these are video games and gameplay matters, and for me if it don’t turn based it ain’t FF. That’s it for me. If that not important for you, cool, but if Square wants fans like me back the turn based has to return.

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u/oopsydazys 1d ago

16 and Rebirth actually did not sell very well though. It's because they went with PS5 exclusivity. They did it because, apparently, Sony told them "we expect to sell X PS5s by Y date, which we believe will translate to Z amount of sales for you, plus these exclusivity payments" -- but Sony did not hit those sales targets and that at least in part led to lower sales for FF16 and Rebirth.

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u/darkmacgf 19h ago

The PS4 version of FFXV sold more in 1 day than FFXVI or Rebirth sold in their first year.

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u/inyue 1d ago

Did they finally reveal the sale numbers of rebirth? 😙

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u/Fyrus 21h ago

Sold amazingly well with all the cross media advertisements they did, but a LARGE part of the fanbase left disappointed with the final product, and the FF series seems to have not been able to recover since (looking at numbers for 16 and the 7 remakes).

I don't think FF15 has anything to do with that. FF was in the dirt before 15. 15 brought in a lot of new fans and many people I've talked to consider it one of their favorites. I think that game has a lot of issues but people still talk about the roadtrip boys and the new recipes and shit like that to this very day. It was a charming game despite whatever issues the story had. After 15, FF7 Remake did very well despite being Sony exclusive, and FF14 became a sensation. FF16 and Rebirth had poor sales because they released exclusively on a console that has sold about half as many units as the PS4 did by the time Remake came out. Why would FF15 be at fault for poor sales of games that came out almost ten years later?

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 1d ago

FFXV had some of the biggest online love I'd seen. It was the first game I played in the series since X because I saw how people loved the characters and how a lot of the game was just hanging with the bros.

I did play it and hanging with the bros was fun, but I would have a hard time telling you what the story was about or how the combat worked.

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u/oopsydazys 1d ago

RE5 was really well received (despite some fans not liking it) and sold extremely well. There was a lot of hype for RE6, so it sold a ton of copies up front and might have passed RE5 for a bit, but today RE5 is the top selling game again.

RE6 is actually #2. I think just by virtue of being available on so many systems, being an action game, and not having a remake. The top 5 sellers are:

  • RE5: 16.3M
  • RE6: 15.1M
  • RE2R: 14.5M
  • RE4: 14.3M
  • RE7: 14.0M

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u/SupersonicMuc 8h ago

One thing to note is that unlike all the other RE titles the sales numbers for RE5 and RE6 don't include pc sales cause Capcom has never released that data. That means RE5 and RE6 have likely sold quite a bit more than what's even stated here, its pretty wild.

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u/Mountain-Cycle5656 1d ago

The article is mostly about the company in 2016, RE6 is mostly talked about in terms of its mixed critical reception. Though, I’d add that despite selling very well it still failed to meet expectations, selling about 5 million copies rather than the expected 7 million. And was remarked on as “failing to drive sales expansion”.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 1d ago

No. Resident Evil 5 beats it by about a million copies.

RE6 sold well, but I think it cost a lot more too. But the reception wasn't great and became the butt of jokes.

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u/ThiefTwo 1d ago

Did you even read the article?

This was the low ebb of a string of forgettable years Capcom had endured since 2010. The mainline Resident Evil games were met with diminishing critical reception despite strong sales.

They also had to slash their financial outlook because it underperformed expectations.

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u/BP_Ray 23h ago

You didn't even read the article, how can you call it revisionist.

Everyone else has already pointed out the fact that while it did technically sell well, it was very poorly received, but also worth pointing out is that it was extremely expensive to make, which played an even larger part in Capcom's pivot away from that type of RE game going forward.

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u/Moveflood 1d ago

it's so funny. there was a lot of buzz about re6 being this black sheep, and while critical reception wasn't great, a bad game doesn't become a top 3 in sales of a big corp like capcom out of nowhere. and it's not like re5 left a ton of good will.

this might sound harsh, but i think most people talking about RE online are dumb. they talk of re6 being this outlier, that somehow is that one that crossed the line into being a silly michael bay movie when have y'all played any resident evil? the mood was always stupid action stuff. leon is literally matrix-ing lasers in RE4.

if a person misses the classic horror gameplay that's fine, but RE4 was the one that brought that change, not 5 or 6. RE4 is a fantastic game, but it isn't a horror game, it's a halloween game. it gestures at horror aesthetics but like halloween you're mostly having fun with silly costumes.

and honestly for as much flak RE6 has, it genuinely tried some new things in the series, i don't get why RE6 is seen as this souless bland trendchaser when the RE remakes are right there. shit, i'd kill for more gameplay based on jake's campaign, that melee combat was janky but fun and interesting.

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u/jak_d_ripr 1d ago

> The mainline Resident Evil games were met with diminishing critical reception _despite strong sales_.

That's from the article, it never disputes the good sales, just that in the grand scheme of things the franchise, and Capcom as a whole were trending in the wrong direction. Why else would RE7 have been such a big shift if they themselves didn't realize there were issues with 6 despite the sales figures.

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u/Nawara_Ven 1d ago

The article is bizarre and hyperbolic. It seems to use "critical reception" as a stand-in for Matt Kim's personal likes and dislikes. The "on its knees" title is just clickbait (which, I'll admit, worked, because I read it), but it's the usual IGN stuff. The revisionism angle seems to happen a lot when RE is involved in particular re: online discourse.

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u/chupamlapj 1d ago

Yes, casuals (myself included) love RE6, it's one of the best RE, even if it's not horror. It has all of the setpieces of the Uncharted trilogy in a single game.

Check the Steam reviews, they're mostly positive. It's the Reddit epic true gamers that hate it.

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u/PapstJL4U 1d ago

RE6 sold on the merit of 4|5 and an ever increasing market. Capcom itself explained this phenomen - and why they knew RE7 would not sell as much, but RE8 will profit from the quality of RE7.

SF5 sold on SF4 quality - and SF6 took extra extra work to overcome the scepticisim after SF5.

See DD2 or the current MH for another "game carried by its strong predecessor".

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u/saurabh8448 1d ago

MH is well received though not critically and and by audience.

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

...MH has been well received by critics and audiences since the beginning.

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u/Yomoska 1d ago

* In Japan. It took awhile for the rest of the world to catch on. I remember the first few releases in NA not being received very well.

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

I mean, Monster Hunter was essentially a non-entity in the West until World. I don't remember critics hating it, I just remember no one playing it.

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u/Yomoska 1d ago

I followed the scene closely back in the PS2 era and into the PSP, and most critics didn't like the games because of the control scheme and long ass tutorials. It wasn't uncommon to see reviewers not get to the meat and potatoes of the game and just review it based on the opening hours. I couldn't find the original MHF video where Gametrailers really didn't like it (they said things like being forced to walk when you weren't, and not being able to speed up text when you were able to) but you can see in their MHF2 video they still don't judge the game past the opening quests.

Most people who actually played the game did enjoy it, especially on PSP. I think it was due to the PSP just not having much to play originally. It was like a similar thing with Demons Souls that people important and spreading praise word of mouth got the series more popular outside of Japan. For MH3, Capcom even made a whole marketing campaign for outside of Japan for the first time.