Despite taking a beating from some critics (including two of our own) Capcom's Resident Evil 6 appears to be a hit in Japan, nearly doubling the sales of Resident Evil 5 in the same time period.
The Japanese sales-tracking service Media Create shows the PlayStation 3 version of RE6 selling 634,933 and 92,921 in its first two weeks of sale, for a total of 727,854 copies sold.
Media Create archives maintained by a user on the gaming message board NeoGAF put the PS3 version of 2009's Resident Evil 5 at 319,000 and 61,483 for a total of 380,483 in its first two weeks of sales. (Sales of the Xbox360 version of this and any other game in Japan are much lower, because Microsoft's console is not popular in that country).
Gaming industry news site Gamasutra notes that RE6 received a near-perfect review in leading Japanese game magazine Famitsu and has sold well in the U.K. U.S. sales are unknown, for now.
Resident Evil 6 offers players four playable campaigns which showcase different styles of play, from the creeping survival horror of the early games in the series to the more Hollywood-action-move adventure of RE5. The game's deep lean toward the latter has made it controversial for critics and even one of Japan's most popular gamers. But if the game sells well, who will Capcom listen to in the future? Any critics who panned Resident Evil 6? Or the droves of fans who, at least in Japan, appear to be buying it?