2.4 million people have played Capcom’s ‘1-Shot’ Resident Evil 2 demo

Capcom’s "1-Shot" Resident Evil 2 demo has been downloaded over two million times.

According to developer Capcom’s own statistics (thanks, Destructoid), the demo – which gives players a single opportunity to get through a tense, half-hour segment of its upcoming remake of Resident Evil 2 – has been downloaded just shy of 2.4 million times at the time of writing, with 26 per cent of players making it all the way through until the end.

That said, this figure only illustrates the players who’d agreed to have their progress tracked by ResidentEvil.net, so the true figure is likely to be significantly higher than this.

Capcom’s off to a strong start this year as Resident Evil 7: Biohazard re-entered the charts at No.28 with a 68 per cent rise in sales as players get ready for the launch of Resident Evil 2 this week. This comes after a record-breaking 2018 for Capcom, which doubled its profits for the first half of this fiscal year largely thanks to Monster Hunter: World, which has now become Capcom’s biggest selling game of all-time.

Topping 10 million shipments in the second quarter of this year – owed, in part, to the long-awaited release of Monster Hunter: World on PC – the action-RPG has hit a record high for the Japanese publisher and developer, prompting a 70 per cent year-on-year increase in H1 revenue to ¥34.2 billion ($305 million) and boosting Capcom’s operating profit to ¥11.8 billion ($105 million), a 207 per cent increase on the previous year. Net profit rose 97% to ¥6.8 billion ($61 million).

Launched in January 2018, Monster Hunter: World shifted 5 million units during its opening weekend, hitting 7.5 million copies sold by March 31st. Of course, Capcom’s success isn’t solely attributable to Monster Hunter: World; Resident Evil VII, Monster Hunter XX on Switch (a Japan-only title) and Switch-exclusive Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers also contributed to Capcom’s solid fiscal performance.

These profits come despite the closure of Dead Rising studio Capcom Vancouver earlier this year, for which the publisher had anticipated losses of ¥4.5 billion after the termination of projects already in development, resulting in 158 job losses.