"Monster Hunter: A Global Gaming Phenomenon"

In the leadup to its global launch, Monster Hunter Wilds shattered pre-order records on both Steam and PlayStation, effortlessly following in the footsteps of its predecessors, 2022's Monster Hunter Rise and 2018's Monster Hunter: World. These sales figures have firmly established Capcom's unique and esoteric RPG series as one of the biggest video game franchises worldwide.

However, this wasn't always the case. Less than a decade ago, the notion of a Monster Hunter game achieving such widespread acclaim globally would have seemed improbable. Going back even further to the series' inception in 2004, the original game received mixed reviews. It wasn't until a year later, with the release on the PSP, that the series truly took off, but this success was initially confined to Japan.

For years, Monster Hunter epitomized the "bigger in Japan than the rest of the world" phenomenon. The reasons behind this were straightforward, yet it didn't deter Capcom from striving to break through to the international market. The success of Monster Hunter: World, Rise, and now Wilds underscores the value of those efforts.

This is the story of how Monster Hunter evolved from a domestic hit to a global force.

Around the time of Street Fighter 5's launch in 2016, Capcom underwent a significant internal reorganization to prepare for a new generation of games. These games would run on Capcom’s brand-new RE Engine, replacing the aging MT Framework. This shift was more than just a technical upgrade; it came with a new mandate to design games not only for existing, territory-specific fans but for a global audience.

"It was a few factors that came together," says Hideaki Itsuno, a former game director at Capcom known for his work on Devil May Cry. "The change of the engine and also all teams were given a very clear goal at that point to make games that reach the global market. [Games] that are fun for everyone."

During the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, Capcom seemed to be targeting an imagined version of the "Western games market." While Resident Evil 4 was a major success, other attempts like Umbrella Corps and the Lost Planet series, which leaned heavily into Western gaming trends, didn't fare as well. Capcom realized it needed to create games that appealed universally, not just to fans of traditional Western genres.

"All teams were given a very clear goal to make games that reach the global market," Itsuno states. "I think that we had that clear goal of just focusing and not holding anything back, towards making good games that would reach people from all over the world."

Itsuno emphasizes that the period leading up to 2017 was crucial. "The changes in organization and the changes in the engine, all these elements came together around that time," he says. The launch of Resident Evil 7 in 2017 marked the beginning of a Capcom renaissance.

No other series encapsulates Capcom's new goal for global success better than Monster Hunter. Although it had a dedicated following in the West, the series was significantly more popular in Japan for many years. This wasn't due to an intentional focus on the Japanese market but rather due to real-world factors.

Monster Hunter found immense success when it transitioned from the PlayStation 2 to the PSP with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. The handheld gaming market has traditionally been stronger in Japan than in the West, as evidenced by the success of the PSP, Nintendo’s DS, and more recently, the Switch. According to the series’ executive producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, the key to Monster Hunter's success in Japan was the country's advanced wireless internet network, which enabled players to easily play with friends.

"20 years ago, Japan was in a very, very solid state in terms of the network environments available to people, and being able to connect and to play online together," Tsujimoto explains. "And of course, we’re not speaking for everyone there, because we realize that there are people who may not have had the chance to play with friends back then. But by moving over to handheld systems, we were able to grow that player base that was interacting and playing multiplayer together."

Monster Hunter, with its core focus on cooperative play, thrived on this setup, which allowed friends to quickly join hunts together. This inadvertently led to the series being developed primarily for the Japanese market, even though that wasn't the intention.

This created a feedback loop where Monster Hunter games became best-sellers in Japan, prompting Capcom to release Japan-only content and host Japan-only events, reinforcing the series' image as a "Japan-only" brand.

However, Monster Hunter did have fans in the West, who eagerly watched from the sidelines as Japanese players enjoyed exclusive content. As the Western world improved its internet infrastructure and online play became standard, Tsujimoto and his team saw an opportunity to create their most advanced and globally accessible Monster Hunter game yet.

In 2018, Monster Hunter: World was released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, marking a significant shift for the franchise. It offered large-scale, AAA console quality action with enhanced graphics, expansive areas, and larger monsters, designed to appeal to a worldwide audience.

"Our approach to the globalization of the series and Monster Hunter in general really ties into not only the themes that we had going into designing the game, but also in the name of the game," Tsujimoto reveals. "The fact that we called it Monster Hunter: World is really kind of a nod to the fact that we wanted to appeal to this worldwide audience that we wanted to really dig into and experience Monster Hunter for the first time."

It was crucial that Monster Hunter: World did not favor one market over another. The game was released simultaneously worldwide, with no exclusive content locked to Japan. Tsujimoto notes, "This comes with realigning ourselves to hit those global standards that people come to expect of titles around the world."

Beyond simultaneous global release, Tsujimoto and his team conducted extensive focus tests and user tests worldwide. "We did focus tests and user tests across the world, and some of the impact of those — the feedback and the opinions that we got during that really affected how we designed our game systems and really affected how much success we had as a global title for that game," Tsujimoto says.

One significant change resulting from these tests was the introduction of visible damage numbers when players hit monsters. Such tweaks to the already successful formula propelled Monster Hunter to unprecedented heights. Previous Monster Hunter games typically sold between 1.3 and 5 million copies, not including re-releases and special editions. In contrast, Monster Hunter: World and Monster Hunter Rise both surpassed 20 million copies in sales.

This growth was no accident. Rather than altering Monster Hunter to cater to Western tastes, Tsujimoto and his team found ways to make the series' unique and sometimes complex nature more accessible to a broader audience without compromising its essence. This approach continues with the latest installment, Monster Hunter Wilds.

"At its heart, Monster Hunter really is an action game, and that sense of accomplishment you get from really mastering that action is an important aspect of Monster Hunter," Tsujimoto explains. "But for newer players, it's really getting to that point. The steps involved in getting to that sense of accomplishment is really what we're trying to strategize for, in terms of designing for new players. So with World and Rise, for example, we were taking really great care to analyze where players got stuck, what was hard to understand, what they were having trouble with, getting player feedback, and also doing our own kind of research into that. And all of that kind of knowledge has impacted how we've implemented new systems into Wilds."

Within 35 minutes of its release, Monster Hunter Wilds reached 738,000 concurrent players on Steam, more than doubling Monster Hunter: World's all-time high. With glowing reviews and the promise of more content, Monster Hunter Wilds is poised to continue the series' mission to conquer the global gaming market.