Resident Evil Village smashed the series’ PC player record on its first day

Resident Evil Village has enjoyed a strong debut on PC, comfortably smashing the series’ record for concurrent players on Steam.

On Friday, the Capcom title debuted with a peak concurrent player count of 101,726. As noted by Eurogamer, this is significantly higher than Resident Evil 2’s 74,024 peak, and over five times more than Resident Evil 7’s 18,211, according to SteamCharts.

On Twitch, Village has over 200,000 concurrent viewers at the time of publishing.

Although we’re yet to see console sale figures, the PC performance suggests another hit for Capcom in Resident Evil’s 25^th anniversary year.

Capcom has said it hopes Village will become the franchise’s best-selling entry, following strong sales of the game’s last numbered entry (8.5m), which is its no. 1 title.

“Our main ambition for this year, although there’s so much going on at the same time, is to make sure Resident Evil: Village will be the best-performing Resident Evil title, both in terms of quality as well as business,” Capcom’s EMEA marketing director Antoine Molant told GI.biz in March.

“We’ve known from our own sales over the past few years that our products will sell for five or even ten years plus. Village isn’t necessarily about chasing a new platform audience, but rather allowing consumers to choose what platform they want to experience the game on.

“Whether that’s PS5, PS4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, or PC at the present time or in several years. We are offering people console upgrades for no charge, as we firmly believe it’s about experiencing Resident Evil: Village, not having to make a difficult purchase choice given future plans and timing of upgrading.”

VGC’s Resident Evil Village review calls Capcom’s horror adventure “a deliciously hammy hybrid of past glories, with some real series highs”.

Resident Evil: Village is a powerful monster, bolting together parts from Resident Evils 7, 4 and more besides. The downside of its eclectic approach is some unevenness and less tension, especially in a relatively weak opening act. But its eventual blend of parts is gloriously big, daft and fuelled by the finest of nightmares.”