We take a look at the growth of Capcom's top five best-selling franchise to get a better perspective of the games company.
Capcom just reported record Q1 earnings with an all-time high of 48 billion yen in sales, up over 100% from last year. Game sales from big franchises like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter were the major driver; Resident Evil Village alone made up 33% of the 13.3 million games sold during Q1'21.
While Capcom does have a diversified lineup of games, the majority of its yearly sales are propped up by tentpole franchises. The same is true for the likes of Take-Two, Ubisoft, EA, and Activision-Blizzard, who each have heavy-hitters like NBA 2K, Assassin's Creed, FIFA, and Call of Duty.
Capcom's top ten best-selling franchises are quite varied, and some of them like Onimusha and Dead Rising haven't had new releases for a while. For our purposes we're just going to take a look at the top five best-sellers over the last three years to illustrate Capcom's growth as well as how important these IPs are for the company.
As of March 31, 2021, Capcom's five best-selling franchises are:
- Resident Evil - 110 million units
- Monster Hunter - 72 million units
- Street Fighter - 46 million units
- Mega Man - 36 million units
- Devil May Cry - 23 million units
Notable releases during the last 3 fiscal years (FY17 - FY20):
- Monster Hunter World (Q4 FY2017)
- Devil May Cry 5 (Q4 2018)
- RE2 Remake (Q4 2018)
- Marvel vs Capcom Infinite (Q2 2017)
- Resident Evil 3 Remake (Q1 2020)
- Monster Hunter Rise (Q4 2020)