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The official announcement of Resident Evil 9, titled Resident Evil Requiem, is massive: This is a series that has survived close to three decades now, with the release date of this newest title commemorating Resident Evil’s 30th anniversary. These legacy series make huge waves when they debut a new entry, as shown by publisher Capcom’s other recent releases and.
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The official announcement of Resident Evil 9, titled
There are just too many influencers now. On
Indie games have a lot of buzz right
Of course, nothing’s guaranteed in this day and age, and neglecting to market your game and monitor public sentiment around it can be disastrous for these AAA titles on launch. Additionally, Resident Evil 9 may end up going up against an even more hyped game next year in the form of GTA VI. To see how Capcom can stick the landing, we’re looking at how the live streaming community has supported Resident Evil in the past and how they’ve been feeling about Resident Evil 9 prior to its announcement.
Looking at the Resident Evil franchise’s history on live streaming proves its incredible dominance as a favourite among streamers and their fans. When the last mainline entry in the series released back in Q2 2021, Resident Evil Village brought in 75.8M quarterly hours watched. This is monumental, placing Resident Evil Village among the top 10 games by first 30 days’ hours watched across all of live streaming. The franchise is so popular, in fact, that even remakes of earlier entries receive upwards of 25M hours watched in their release quarters. Resident Evil 4 even generated 54.5M hours watched in its first 30 days (note that since it was released on the 24th of March, this viewership is split over two quarters in the graphic above).
Of course every AAA series would expect to get new support when a new entry is released. But what’s more impressive about the live-streaming support for Resident Evil is just how consistent it is: Even in non-release quarters, Resident Evil franchise viewership sits at 10-20M hours watched (post-COVID). This viewership comes from an almost even mix of all past entries: That’s incredibly rare. Typically either the latest game is more popular, or there’s a fan-favourite nostalgic title that churns out hours. There could be a few reasons Resident Evil’s viewership is so diverse:
This enduring desire to replay old titles also reveals itself in the lead up to new game releases. For example, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard viewership steadily rose leading up to Resident Evil Village’s release on the 7th of May 2021, hitting a peak daily hours watched of 535K. Viewership then died off almost completely as streamers jumped onto the new title, before occasionally spiking a few weeks later (presumably as streamers now hooked on the series decided to revisit old tiles). This exact same effect can also be seen for Resident Evil (meaning Resident Evil 1) before Resident Evil 2 remake’s release, and for Resident Evil Village before Resident Evil 4 remake’s release. Hence, we can expect a similar effect before Resident Evil Requiem launches. Capcom has capitalized on this effect with a massive 75% off the price of Resident Evil Village on Steam to grab any curious viewers of the announcement at Summer Games Fest.
Looking at top streamers of Resident Evil Village, the last mainline entry in the series, gives us a clear picture of which streamers would be covering a new entry. Interestingly, the most watched streamer is Souls-like streamer Distortion2 with 1.9M hours watched of Resident Evil Village content since its release, far out ahead of 2nd and 3rd places by a full 700K hours. It may be that Distortion2 was drawn to the game by its aesthetic, having a similar gothic/horror theme to that of FromSoftware’s games. Adil Mirza and CarryisLive aren’t as popular now compared to back in 2021, so might not be the best partners (Adil Mirza used to stream back on Facebook Gaming as xAcceptiion). But other names on this list are still popular streamers that viewers frequently turn to for coverage of new releases, like Rubius and xQc.
This raises the point of who Capcom might reach out to for the launch of Resident Evil Requiem. Historically, influencer marketing has been fairly light for Resident Evil. Capcom has been burned in the past, when Resident Evil 6 was over-marketed which spoiled a lot of the game’s story – a massive marketing mistake for a series with a single player campaign. Since then, Capcom has instead taken a more social media-heavy approach to marketing the series. Resident Evil 7:Biohazard was shrouded in mystery as a reboot of the franchise, while Resident Evil Village was promoted almost exclusively via memes of one of its antagonists Lady Dimitrescu (in a clever TikTok campaign run by QYOU). Both of these info-light approaches fueled speculation to boost earned media and word-of-mouth discussion around the games. Will we see the same approach for Resident Evil 9..?
Before we discuss what Capcom’s strategy might be, let’s look at just how much live-streaming viewers are craving for more survival horror from Resident Evil. Among a selection of the most popular survival horror franchises, Resident Evil comes out in front on live streaming with more hours watched in the past year than any other similar franchise. The only other franchise to even come close is Konami’s Silent Hill – but that’s largely due to the Silent Hill 2 remake that released in October of last year, contributing 36.9M hours of the franchise’s total viewership over this period (no other franchises listed had major releases in this time). Removing that effect, Resident Evil stands far above its survival horror competitors, proving that Capcom has planted its flag in the genre among live-streaming audiences.
No wonder then that so many viewers are already speculating about the next entry in the series. On Twitch streams of Resident Evil games over the past year, “Resident Evil” 9 has been mentioned in ~1.6K messages, 25% of which have been positive compared to just 12% negative messages. Negative messages were almost solely from detractors of Resident Evil Village that are skeptical of the direction the series is headed in. But positive messages outweighed this, revolving around either excitement for the new title or a desperate desire for an announcement. Now that we have said announcement, it’ll be interesting to see what new topics of discussion pop up online…
In the meantime, it’s worth looking at what people have been mentioning so far. One of the biggest topics of discussion around Resident Evil 9 is whether the game will be open world (based on supposed leaks). Sure enough, as many as 2.6K chat messages on Twitch have mentioned “open world”, with many of these viewers clamouring to explore classic Resident Evil locations like Raccoon City in an open-world style. On the topic of nostalgia, commenters have also shared their support and theories for different characters from the franchise, with Leon Kennedy coming out on top as the preferred protagonist for Resident Evil 9 with double the mentions of second place Jill Valentine.
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We’ve seen how live-streaming viewers are desperate for new Resident Evil content, making them part of the core audience for the franchise that Capcom will want to activate upon Resident Evil Requiem’s release. As teased during the Summer Games Fest announcement, Resident Evil Requiem marks a shift in the gameplay of the franchise which seems to be grander in scope – these are precisely the sorts of games that perform best on live streaming. Plus this hidden links to past entries (Ashcroft rings some bells…) ensures that viewers will be speculating on the game’s story too.
The best way to reach viewers is through creative influencer marketing campaigns, but this strategy hasn’t been fully used for Resident Evil before. Regardless, Capcom may be open to the idea of influencer marketing after their Monster Hunter Wilds activation with IShowSpeed brought in a huge earned media boost. To find out more about Capcom’s previous influencer marketing activation for Monster Hunter Wilds, download Stream Hatchet & Sideqik’s Free Influencer Marketing eBook now:
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The official announcement of Resident Evil 9, titled
There are just too many influencers now. On
Indie games have a lot of buzz right
Monster Hunter Wilds Street Fighter 6
