This past week Capcom revealed that life-to-date sales of Resident Evil 5 have overtaken Street Fighter II, making the fifth (lackluster) entry in the Resident Evil franchise the Japanese publisher’s new best-selling video game of all time.
The update to Capcom’s Platinum Titles list on their investor site reveals that LTD sales of Resident Evil 5 have now reached 6.5 million units, beating out Street Fighter II‘s 6.3 million. This places the classic fighter smack in the middle of a nasty Jill sandwich, with Resident Evil 6 and its 5.2 million in sales stalled out in third place.
While the news of Street Fighter II‘s fall from the top of Capcom’s charts is devastating to Resident Evil 5 haters/SFII lovers (like myself), there is a footnote in the sales data that provides a small bit of comfort. RE5‘s life-to-date sales are calculated as a combined total from the PS3, Xbox 360, and full-game downloads via PSN (which, thanks to its PlayStation Plus appearance, is the likely culprit for the unexpected bump in sales), Xbox Live, and PC. On the other hand, Street Fighter II has only the original Super Nintendo version to thank for its 6.3 million in LTD sales. None of the fighter’s various releases on other platforms or downloadable services are recorded in the data.
We may never know exactly how Capcom’s top two selling games stack up against each other, but in my mind the missing Street Fighter II sales data has to be more than enough to close the gap on the yukky Resident Evil 5.
Capcom’s top 10 Platinum Titles are as follows:
| Release | Title | Platform | Units (000 copies) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2009/3 | Resident Evil 5 | PS3,Xbox 360,DL | 6,500 |
| 2 | 1992/6 | Street Fighter II | SFC | 6,300 |
| 3 | 2012/10 | Resident Evil 6 | PS3,Xbox 360,DL | 5,200 |
| 4 | 1998/1 | Resident Evil 2 | PS | 4,960 |
| 5 | 2010/12 | Monster Hunter Freedom 3 | PSP,DL | 4,800 |
| 6 | 1993/7 | Street Fighter II Turbo | SFC | 4,100 |
| 7 | 2008/3 | Monster Hunter Freedom Unite | PSP,DL | 3,600 |
| 8 | 1999/9 | Resident Evil 3 Nemesis | PS | 3,500 |
| 9 | 2009/2 | Street Fighter IV | PS3,Xbox 360,DL | 3,300 |
| 10 | 2013/9 | Monster Hunter 4 | 3DS,DL | 2,800 |
