The Street Fighter franchise reaches 45 million copies sold, Street Fighter 5 likely now over 5 million units
Capcom's arcade business is understandably slumping though
Street Fighter kicked off the fighting game craze of the '90s which has continued to this day, so it's no surprise that the franchise is one of Capcom's best performers in the company's history.
Capcom has released their latest financial report for the first financial quarter ending June 30, 2020 which revealed that the Street Fighter franchise has reached 45 million copies sold worldwide on top of strong games division performance overall.
This is a 1 million game increase for Street Fighter over the past quarter which points to recent entries like SF5, 30th Anniversary Collection and Ultra SF2 managed to push that in only three months.
Assuming most of those games sold from the past quarter were Street Fighter 5, that means Capcom's current flagship fighting game has more than likely crossed 5 million copies sold in total considering the title was at 4.5 million in the previous where it became the company's 10th-best selling release.
Overall, Capcom had a pretty great first financial quarter given the current global situation, as their net sales actually increased 32 percent to 23.7 billion yen (~$223 million) year-over-year with operating income and net income both seeing similar boosts as reported by GamesIndustry.biz.
This increase is largely attributed to game sales with Resident Evil 3 managing to push 2.7 million copies in its launch window bumping their revenue up 54 percent.
Capcom's arcade business, however, did not fare as well due to closures from the coronavirus pandemic where operating income dropped 500 million yen ($4.7 million), equating to a 63 percent drop in store sales.
Interestingly, while their forecast remains high for the next year in most areas, eSports operating income is planned to lose about $11 million at this same point in 2021 though other forms of the business are expected to grow during that time.
For comparison's sake, Bandai Namco's Katsuhiro Harada revealed last week that Tekken 7 had reached 6 million copies sold which seems to have pushed the 3D fighter franchise to 50 million games.
Things are certainly looking up for Street Fighter fans at the moment considering there's confirmed to be new character announcements and more coming to SF5 later today.
If Street Fighter 5 has indeed reached 5 million copies sold, that would bump it up a couple more spaces to become Capcom's 8th best-seller taking over Resident Evil 2's original release.
That would put it just behind Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and the original home release for Street Fighter 2 which is still the company's single best fighting game release at 6.3 million units in the '90s.
