Capcom’s venerable Resident Evil franchise is now more than 25 years old, and through all its iterations and remakes, the survival horror series remains as popular as ever. The recent release Resident Evil Village has become a showcase for the power of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, and reviewers have been overwhelmingly positive about the sequel to Resident Evil 7.

During its fiscal announcement, Capcom noted that Village has already shipped 3 million copies worldwide while Resident Evil 7 has now reached 9 million shipped. Additionally, with the game available on PC, Village has become the first in the franchise to achieve over 100,000 peak concurrent players on Steam. All told, the franchise has now eclipsed 113 million units shifted during its lifetime.

Part of Village’s success can be attributed to Capcom putting the game’s antagonist, an oddly large vampire woman called Lady Dimitrescu, front-and-center in its marketing creative. The internet quickly latched onto the new character, creating all sorts of memes and mashups. Capcom sent out life-size standees of Lady Dimitrescu to retail, while also featuring the character on buses, towels, and other items. Even Domino’s leveraged the seductive vampire to advertise its pizza. During 2020, with many gamers anticipating Village’s release, Interpret’s New Media Measure® showed that interest in playing a new Resident Evil game was quite high, as more than half of Millennial and Gen X gamers indicated interest. Over 40% of Gen Z also expressed interest, which shows that Capcom is successfully cultivating new fans who weren’t around to play earlier iterations in the franchise at launch. In a good sign for the health of the franchise,  Interpret data has also shown declared fanship remaining steady among Millennial and Gen X gamers at 33% and 26%, respectively.