Resident Evil 5 Clinches 4 Million Shipped

— -- Query: What's the "resident" in Resident Evil mean, anyway? Living at a school or institution? Having quarters on the premises of one's work? A medical graduate? Immediately available in computer memory? Nonmigratory?

It's surprising what Wikipedia won't tell you. Capcom's 13-year-old survival horror series is actually known in Japan as Biohazard, which, when you think about it, more aptly summarizes what it's about, i.e. science fictive horror, not to be confused with the supernatural variety.

In any event, Capcom is today boasting it sold four million copies of Resident Evil 5 worldwide since it launched last Friday. That's four million copies shipped to retailers, not sold-through to consumers. The upside of that number is that it's not just an estimate of what's changed hands at the distribution level. We'll have a better (but conversely less deterministic) sense of how many copies were in fact purchased by consumers when the retail analyst firms release their projections in the coming weeks and months.

Sharing the four million club (four million downloads, that is): The Resident Evil 5 demo.

Matt Peckham wishes RE5 was co-op only, because solo play with Sheva is the pits. He's still working through the game at twitter.com/game_on.