Monster Hunter World looks utterly incredible, and it looks like this will be the series’ breakout moment in the west. And Capcom, much to their credit, are also doing everything right with the new game, and avoiding succumbing to the worst of the AAA excesses that they and others have fallen prey to so often.
For instance, consider the question of post launch support. It would have been too easy for them to monetize content via microtransactions and expansions- something like Destiny is able to get away with that without issue. And yet, Capcom have confirmed that the game will continue to get free post launch monster DLC.
“We are thinking about free, post-launch updates for Monster Hunter: World. What I can specifically say is that we plan to add new monsters and such in hopes that users play for a long time. As for what kind of monsters will be added and so on, information will be shared later on, so please look forward to it,” producter Ryozo Tsujimoto said in an interview with Famitsu (translation provided by Gematsu).
Of course, this is par for the course for Monster Hunter– the 3DS games had incredible post launch support too, as an example. But, again, bringing the game to a console audience conditioned to microtransactions and the like would have given them an easy out to start including those elements now. They are not- and that is laudable.
Monster Hunter World launches on PS4 and Xbox One on January 26, 2018, with a PC release following shortly afterwards. Make sure to get it, okay?