Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie hit theaters on September 18, and the games followed. According to Alinea Analytics, Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil 4 (2023) saw PlayStation 5 sales jump 64% and 54% respectively in the week after release. Revenue on the platform climbed even higher, up 80% and 84%. Daily active users for RE2 Remake rose 48%, from roughly 78,000 to 116,000.
But the film is only part of the story. Capcom discounted several Resident Evil titles on September 10, eight days before the movie opened. The overlap makes attribution messy, and Alinea's data points to the discount doing more work than the theatrical release in several categories.
PlayStation moved, Steam didn't
The platform split is stark. On Steam, the same two games posted sales increases of 11% and 14% — real, but modest compared to PS5. One data source puts RE4 (2023) Steam sales growth at 0%, with RE2 Remake at 16%. The PlayStation numbers held up across sources: one set shows RE4 (2023) at 77% on PS5 after adjusting for the discount window.
📊 Market Data Snapshot
What that tells you is PS5 owners respond to cross-media promotion. Steam users, by contrast, either already own these games or wait for steeper cuts. Alinea says additional PS5 copies after stripping out the discount effect landed in the 50-65% range.
The discount mirage
Capcom put Resident Evil Requiem on sale for $49, down from its $70 list price — a 30% cut. That kind of pricing is now standard practice around major releases, and it's working. Requiem has passed $500 million in lifetime revenue, with 91% of sales coming through PlayStation and Steam. In Japan, PlayStation and PC sales climbed 13%, and the title has moved 21 million copies across those platforms.
The risk here isn't for Capcom. It's for anyone building a business model on full-price sales. If a catalog as strong as Resident Evil needs a discount to generate a meaningful bump, weaker IP has a harder road.
Box office: strong, not dominant
The movie has grossed over $196 million globally, making it the fourth highest-grossing live-action Resident Evil film. In its second week, it was dethroned by a re-release of Avengers: Endgame, which pulled $26 million in North America. Disney's decision to put that back in theaters cut into the Resident Evil film's momentum, though the game sales bump appears to have already landed.
Elsewhere in the franchise, Resident Evil Veronica has almost 2 million Steam wishlists — a signal that Capcom's pipeline isn't slowing down. Resident Evil 3 Remake also saw daily active users rise 25% after the movie, and Requiem's daily players ticked up 20%.
What to watch
Capcom hasn't said whether it will extend the discount window or run a similar promotion around the movie's home release. The next hard data point will be October sales figures, which will show whether the PS5 bump held or faded once the September 10 sale ended. For now, the movie gave the games a visible push. The receipt, though, has a discount line on it.
