In early March, the much anticipated horror sequel Resident Evil 5 was leaked to torrent sites and P2P, a full ten days before its official release date. Capcom was understandably upset, but launch month sales were spectacular and it appears those sales remain strong despite the leak.
Capcom CFO Kazuhiko Abe adds that sales of the sequel are currently at 4.97 million and rising, on “very strong demand”.
Abe notes that the company sold 4.4 million units in March alone, and that the title will top 5 million within days.
The publisher, like all other major publishers, has complained of piracy woes in the past, even citing piracy as the main reason Devil May Cry 4 had stagnant sales. The publisher said the PC version of the game had been “pirated to hell” and that Capcom Japan refused to release it digitally as a result.
Result for: resident evil
Following recent blockbuster leaks such as that of Resident Evil 5, Electronic Arts’ Sims 3 game has been leaked to P2P, a full 15 days before its official release date.
The ISO file is 4.94 GB large and the game has had its Securom DRM cracked. The Sims 3 was set to be EA’s flagship game for 2009 but may have some sales hindered by piracy. This is not always true however as despite being leaked, Resident Evil 5 still set sales record for the series.
The game has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times already and is being called the “real deal” with little to no bugs or crashes.
EA has had a bad year so far in terms of piracy and leaks, especially with the debacle that came with the release of the hit game Spore which eventually led to a class action suit against the developer.
Result for: resident evil
Despite the highly-anticipated horror sequel Resident Evil 5 being leaked to torrent sites and P2P, a full ten days before its official release date, the game saw incredible first day sales on March 13th, breaking sales records from previous Resident Evil titles.
Capcom says four million copies were sold for the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 on the first day, and sales are currently over 5 million in 3 days of release.
The publisher, like all other major publishers, has complained of piracy woes in the past, even citing piracy as the main reason Devil May Cry 4 had stagnant sales. The publisher said the PC version of the game had been “pirated to hell” and that Capcom Japan refused to release it digitally as a result.
Overall, for all systems, Capcom has sold 40 million copies of the series since its launch in 1996.
