Life can sometimes be unpredictable. If, just a few years ago, someone would have told you that Monster Hunter would be Capcom’s biggest franchise seemingly overnight, I imagine you would have laughed. While the series certainly enjoyed a following, it was largely restricted to Japan (Nintendo had to basically localize several titles for the 3DS). But here we are, and if you have any doubts it was a surprise to the publisher, too, the initial sales goal speaks for itself.
As Ryozo Tsujimoto, Head of Consumer Games for Development Division 2 revealed in an interview, Capcom initially was hoping for the game to reach 5 millions units sold. It obviously smashed that goal by triple. Hell, the Iceborne expansion almost hit that goal itself already with over 4 million shipped.
“We were developing Iceborne in parallel after the release of World, so there was no real sense of “finally, we’re finished!” Even now we’re continuing to promote World, so it’s still too early for a breather. Having said that, we’d always felt that selling 5 million copies was our first major goal, so we’re very happy that we were able to clear that hurdle by such a wide margin. There are still players out there who have yet to be introduced to World, and as a producer I want to push its numbers even higher.”
No doubt, the game is nothing short of a runaway success at this point. It’ll be interesting to see if this will be sustained when new titles come out as well. Either way, Monster Hunter World and its expansion is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.