Resident Evil 7 and other recent AAA ports are reportedly massive sales disappointments on iOS

The recent mobile port of Capcom’s AAA survival horror game Resident Evil 7 has reportedly flopped hard in terms of sales, having been purchased by fewer than 2,000 players. With the initially free-to-play game being downloaded 83,000 times since it released on the 2nd of July, that makes the game’s conversion rate of free-to-paid players a meagre 2.4%.

These stats come courtesy of mobilegamer.biz, which calculates that the game has made only $28,140 USD at time of writing. This amount doesn’t take Apple’s 30% cut of App Store sales into account. This means that the actual revenue the game has generated is closer to $19,698, which is astoundingly low. Mobilegamer.biz has also noted that the other recent iOS ports of other AAA games, such as Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, Death Stranding: Director’s Cut and Resident Evil 4 have also sold very poorly, suggesting that Apple’s attempted pivot towards making the iPhone 15 Pro a legit AAA gaming platform is not going the way the company would have hoped.

Admittedly, there are plenty of mitigating factors to explain these failures. For one, most of these games are pretty old; Resident Evil 7 in particular initially released seven years ago. As such, that players interested in checking it out have already had plenty of time to play it already on multiple different platforms . These AAA games are exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, top of the line and recently-released smartphones whose cheapest variant still costs close to $2,000 AUD. The price is also something to consider, as while many of these games provide free trials, Death Stranding costs $59.99 AUD on the App Store at time of writing, which is a lot more than what many mobile gamers would be accustomed to spending on a single game.

Mobile gaming certainly has plenty of successes, especially in the casual gaming space. However, AAA 3D platformers and survival horror experiences maybe don’t translate quite so well to touch screen controls and a tiny screen. These are not games which are conducive to being played in 5 minute increments on public transport, and if you are seeking to play these titles at home, most gamers would opt for the more comfortable (and cheaper) consoles or PC which would be better ways to experience these games. This isn’t to say that the iPhone 15 Pro will not ever become an established AAA gaming platform, but at least for now, it doesn’t seem like studios are seeing much of a return by porting their AAA games to iOS.