You'd think, at face value, that the appeal of a game series starring an effeminate, shirtless man in leather pants would be limited. Think that, though, and you'd be dead, dead wrong.
Instead, Capcom have today announced that the series, which first began on the PS2 in 2001 (and has since moved to the PS3, PC and 360 as well), has shipped ten million units worldwide. It's another annoying "shipped" statistic from Capcom, meaning it's not ten million sold through to customers, but for a series that's eight years old, the sell-through numbers are probably very, very close to that ten million mark. So we'll cut it some slack.
As an interesting aside, the announcement press release concludes with "Aside from the announcement of a Blu-ray release of the Devil May Cry anime today at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009, Capcom plans to continue developing more franchise releated (sic) products."
With games, books, comics, figures, statues and an anime series, there's not much left to do but make a movie. That or a line of official leather clothing.