Street Fighter V Sales Saw Massive Drop in 2016

By the end of March 2016, Capcom reported that Street Fighter V had sold approximately 1.4 million copies. As of the end of December 2016, that number as increased to 1.5 million, which means that from the months of April to December, Street Fighter V sales only amounted to about 100,000 copies.

This means that Capcom’s latest entry in the popular fighting game franchise only sold an average of 11,000 copies per month spanning that time period. This is a massive drop in sales per month considering the game managed to sell 1.4 million copies within its first six weeks. In addition to that, Capcom had initially hoped that Street Fighter V would break the 2 million milestone by the end of March 2016, a goal that they missed by a mile.

While these numbers are shocking, they’re also not entirely surprising. Street Fighter V became notorious for having a very rocky release, launching with several missing features as well as unstable online performance. Capcom has since patched the game and added several new features in the months after its release, but it seems its launch gave it a poor reputation that pushed away a large part of the audience and caused the drop in sales.

In addition to the update on Street Fighter V’s sales, Capcom also released their financial report from the months of April to December of 2016. According to the report, they saw an overall drop in sales and income compared to the same time as last year, but attribute that loss to the “release of a hit title in the same period of the previous fiscal year,” referring to 2015’s release of Monster Hunter X in Japan.

They report that titles such as Dead Rising 4, Monster Hunter Generations, as well as re-releases of popular Resident Evil games carried most of their sales outside of Japan. They also say that they’re optimistic with the coming months as they predict titles such as Resident Evil 7 biohazard and Monster Hunter XX to boost their sales in 2017.