Though it was panned by many critics in the West, Capcom's Resident Evil 6 has already sold 676,000 copies for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in Japan since debuting there last week.
That's a lot more than Resident Evil 5 sold during its opening week back in 2009, which was around 398,000 copies across both consoles. Media Create figures show that Resident Evil 6's PS3 version alone, which pushed almost 635,000 units, managed to outsell Resident Evil 5's total sales.
The PS3 version's average review score on Metacritic, 63, is quite low for such a high-profile, triple-A release, and many critics have gone further, savaging the game for straying too far from the franchise's roots. Polygon's review called the release "a desperate, ugly bid to appeal to as many people as possible."
Yet in Japan, Resident Evil 6 received a near perfect 39 out of 40 review score from Famitsu, one of the country's most prominent video game magazines and review outlets. And in the UK, it became the fourth biggest seller of 2012, according to Chart-Track.
Producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi recently spoke about the challenges in trying to introduce new elements while still appeasing series fans: "We want to make sure that what we do pleases [the fans] but the initial reaction might not always be positive."
"We do listen to the fans but we can't be beholden to them at every turn or I don't think we'll ever make progress in terms of the series' development," Kobayashi added.
Capcom expects to sell 7 million copies of Resident Evil 6 around the world by the end of the current fiscal year (ending March 31, 2013), and has already shipped over 4.5 million units.
Possible they were paid off for the good review all things considered. I wonder how many copies of the game have already been sold back to Gamestop. That number would tell us a lot (and I would bet it is quite a lot).
Metacritic score of 63 not that bad? 63/100 is near terrible. What grading system did they use at your school? ;p
While it sold as number 2 opening week in the UK, its predecessor sold at number 1. While that statistic by itself means nothing, it was the first week of sales, so people had not read reviews or listened to their friends yet. Seeing how long RE continues to sell well is more important than how it sold from the initial hype.
I think a 39/40 is either paid off or Famitsu is getting lazy. Game play aside, there were other issues that would ping the games score for me. I would hope that a review magazine would scrutinize every aspect of a game, especially a major title like this one. I would be interested in reading the review, but my Japanese is a bit rusty :/
I'm not surprised. While the game is not perfect, it works well enough, you can shoot stuff, there's lots of content, set-pieces, etc... I don't like it at all, but it isn't worse than the majority of FPS and TPS games released in this generation of consoles. The backlash against this game has less to do with it being terrible than it has to do with it being very un-Resident Evil-ish.
@Anthony: Ok, I can see where my statement was a bit stupid. If you see the game as a bonafide, 100% third person shooter, then it doesn't really compare well to so many other games of the same type. However, I like to play a large variety of games, even ones that don't work perfectly, and I could see this game having enough to set it apart from other pure FPS games. Some might like it for the same reason that I like several games with bad Metacritic averages, but I dont personally like RE6. Just trying to say that all things considered, the game isnt terrible (just very dissapointing).
While it sold as number 2 opening week in the UK, its predecessor sold at number 1. While that statistic by itself means nothing, it was the first week of sales, so people had not read reviews or listened to their friends yet. Seeing how long RE continues to sell well is more important than how it sold from the initial hype.
I think a 39/40 is either paid off or Famitsu is getting lazy. Game play aside, there were other issues that would ping the games score for me. I would hope that a review magazine would scrutinize every aspect of a game, especially a major title like this one. I would be interested in reading the review, but my Japanese is a bit rusty :/
and it worked...