Resident Evil's Best-Selling Game Isn't The One You'd Expect

The Resident Evil franchise has grown to become Capcom's best-selling series to date, with its newest award-winning release of Resident Evil Requiem breaking franchise records for its incredibly high release player count. While there is plenty of debate over which entry in the long-running survival horror franchise is the absolute best, the actual sales records tell a completely different story than you might expect.

Although the numbers have shifted over the years, with some Resident Evil entries getting bumped up and down with new releases or remakes, Capcom's recent financial report for 2026 finally offers a definitive answer for which Resident Evil game has sold the most units over the past 30 years.

While most fans would expect the Resident Evil 2 Remaster that introduced a new generation of players to the franchise to reach the number one spot, it still only takes second place on the charts with 18.3M unit sales, following close behind none other than 2009's Resident Evil 5's impressive 19M, according to Capcom's own internal financial data.

What makes the announcement even more surprising is the fact that Resident Evil 5 is rarely seen as one of the best entries in the series, and is often considered as the start of the downward action-focused slope that led to Resident Evil 6 and its infamous reception. With the results being shared by fans on Reddit like zackzackzack07, there have been plenty of theories on how RE5 managed to rise to the top.

Given that the figures are based on unit sales as opposed to raw earnings, some have speculated that "people buy it for five or six dollars" on Steam or other storefronts on discounts, "so they can get the story before they play the actually good games." Several other users noted that RE5's multiplayer aspect likely gave it a significant boost as well, helping the survival horror game survive with such a wide margin for years.

While it's hard to narrow down which of the many factors that caused Resident Evil 5 to stand at the top of the sales rankings for so long, whether it's the price, time of release after Resident Evil 4, or multiplayer features encouraging additional sales, the massive sales figures are more than enough reason as to why RE5 should finally get the remake it definitely deserves.

Unfortunately, despite several teases for a RE5 remake from developers or actors on social media that point towards Capcom starting development for a Resident Evil 5 remake, the only rumors we've seen so far were from much earlier titles like Resident Evil 1 and Resident Evil Code Veronica.

Even if it might be some time before we get to revisit a boulder-punching adventure into Africa with Chris and Eva, the sales figures are hopeful enough for Capcom to at least consider the idea after its current projects are finished development, but with how well the series continues to perform, a remake of Resident Evil 5 feels practically inevitable at this point.