As Resident Evil Requiem Passes $500m Revenue, Analysis Shows 8.6% Sales Were on Xbox, With Remaining 91% Shared Between PS5 and Steam
Resident Evil Requiem sold just 8.6% of its copies on Xbox, new sales analysis indicates.
Data published today by Alinea Analytics revealed the eye-opening split in platform sales for this year's brilliant Resident Evil game, offering yet another glimpse into Xbox's struggles against its rival, Sony's dominant PlayStation 5.
Requiem is still selling faster than any other game in Capcom's survival horror series so far and has now passed $500 million in total revenue, with 8.5 million copies shifted across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. But only 8.6% of that 8.5 million (around 731,000 copies) were sold for Xbox consoles.
Compare that to the whopping 48.1% of copies sold on PS5 (around 4.01 million) and the relatively similar 43.4% of copies sold via Steam (around 3.69 million) and it's clear how far behind Xbox is here.
On the one hand, this isn't a huge surprise. PS5 has sold well this console generation, with 95.3 million units shipped as of June. Six years into its lifecycle and with hardware prices on the rise, sales momentum has notably slowed. But the machine is guaranteed to get a shot in the arm this fall when GTA 6 arrives, and PS5 is exclusively plastered all over the game's marketing.
Xbox Series X/S, on the other hand, has really struggled. Microsoft stopped reporting sales figures years ago, though its current pair of consoles are believed to have sold a little over 35 million units to date — a figure that's worryingly below the unpopular Xbox One, which shifted 58 million units during the last console generation.
Today's data on Resident Evil Requiem sales comes just a day after report pointed to a similarly significant sales split for GTA 6 preorders. The Verge's Tom Warren stated that pre-sales for Rockstar's upcoming blockbuster were "heavily skewed" towards PS5, something that had set off "alarm bells" within Microsoft's Redmond campus.
In a statement shared with IGN, Xbox chief strategy office Matthew Ball responded to this claim by stating that, actually, Microsoft was "very happy with GTA 6 preorders," which were "breaking records for Xbox" and "matching our share of the console market." Exactly which records were being broken, though, Ball did not elaborate.
Of course, no-one should expect a 50:50 sales split for Resident Evil Requiem or GTA 6 preorders across Sony and Microsoft's consoles. PS5 has clearly outsold Xbox Series X/S this generation by some margin, and no one at Xbox is trying to pretend otherwise. Still, what Ball appears to be suggesting — that GTA 6's pre-sales split simply represents the reality of the hardware situation — does not appear to hold up with Requiem sales, where Xbox can be seen lagging behind PS5 far more than its believed hardware sales might suggest.
There's likely a number of reasons for this, and it's fair to suggest that Resident Evil is a long-lived franchise that has historically enjoyed more of a home on PlayStation consoles than Xbox, particularly in the series' homeland of Japan, where Xbox has never gained a proper sales foothold. But it's hard to look at just how far behind Requiem's Xbox sales split is and draw anything positive from it for Xbox. Are people who actually have an Xbox Series X/S now leaving it behind to play on PC or another console? Can these fans be tempted back next console generation, when Microsoft is believed to be launching a machine that can also play games from third-party PC storefronts? Whatever the case, this is another concerning sign as the company struggles through a huge reorganization aimed at ensuring its survival.