Resident Evil 7 is set to launch next year on Jan. 24, to be available on the PS4, Xbox One and PC platforms.
To keep the hype going, Capcom released a working demo of the game, dubbed Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour, which featured an atmosphere very similar to another horror demo title, P.T. The demo was released as soon as Sony formally unveiled the next Resident Evil game to hit the series during this year's E3 gaming convention.
According to a recent announcement by the company, Beginning Hour reached more than two million downloads in its first week, marking a new record for PS4 single-player demo releases. It is also important to note that all of these downloads were made by PlayStation Plus members, or about 10 percent of the total subscribed community.
These statistics assume that, perhaps, some of these Plus subscriptions were created just to access the exclusive demo, which is an achievement on its own. It also serves as a good marketing strategy for the company to get more gamers to subscribe. In addition to Resident Evil 7 demo privileges, the premium online subscription gives PS gamers exclusive and firsthand access to PlayStation games and offers.
"We would like to thank all our fans for the feedback and support — the nail-biting exploration and terrifying atmosphere in the demo is just a taste of what can be expected when the game releases on Jan. 24, 2017," the company writes.
The milestone was first shared among PlayStation Plus members (or "Resident Evil ambassadors," as Capcom refers to them) before the company finally issued an official press release.
This initial and exclusive announcement also gave some insight — albeit still vague — on the game's "dummy finger" item, which the Resident Evil community is concluding "points" to a possible upcoming update for Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour. This supposed update will further extend the demo's 30-minute gameplay by adding more unlockable content.
Players have been trying to unlock each and every secret the demo is hiding, just like how people did in the previous P.T. demo, which definitely required a serious amount of game time if you wanted to unlock its secrets by yourself (trust us, you can't).
While both titles have often been compared with one another, the one thing that Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour has over the Silent Hills P.T. (Playable Teaser) is the fact that it is going to be released. That is, unless some unprecedented scenario occurs in the future for Resident Evil, canceling its launch.
Hopefully, nothing will.
