14 DAY TRIAL // The Street Fighter franchise of video games is probably one of the most popular ones across the world. Achieving mainstream success with Street Fighter II, a title that still brings back fond memories to a lot of gamers, the series recently saw its latest installment, Street Fighter IV, released only a few weeks ago, and, a few days before the official release, already pirated on torrent sites.
But despite the Xbox 360 piracy rate, the game has already hit the two million units shipped milestone, which confirms the great number of Street Fighter fans out there. Although these are only the shipped units, you can figure out that the number of sold ones is also very big. So high are these numbers that they have already beaten the estimate that Capcom, the company responsible for the game, made in November.
“Capcom has achieved the feat of breaking the two million copy mark despite the economic crisis with this first iteration of the "Street Fighter" series in 11 years,” reads a Capcom press release. The statement also mentions the boost in sales that the game will surely get once the newest movie in the franchise, entitled Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, will be released. “The movie was developed in order to help rebuild the "Street Fighter" brand by drawing in new fans and reinvigorating fans of old,” reveals Capcom.
According to the estimates made by Videogamer, the whole Street Fighter franchise has sold over 500,000 arcade machines and over 27 million video games during its lifetime. These sales numbers only highlight the big success that Capcom is currently experiencing, which will soon be strengthened by the release of Resident Evil 5 and Bionic Commando.
But until those two games arrive, you can still enjoy Street Fighter IV on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, as the PC version still doesn't have a concrete release date.