“The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Monster Hunter Wilds was developed around the concept of delivering a natural Monster Hunter Wilds experience on Nintendo Switch 2. In other words, we didn’t want it to feel like a simple port, where the graphics or performance had merely been scaled down to make the game run on Nintendo Switch 2. Instead, our goal was to bring the Wilds experience to Nintendo Switch 2 without compromising the experience of Monster Hunter Wilds.”

Part of the process was the development team needing to figure out which aspects of the visuals in Monster Hunter Wilds could be adjusted to improve its performance on the Nintendo Switch 2. Sunano went as far as to call the process “painstaking, and at times seemingly endless”.

“Wilds is packed with a tremendous number of elements, so we had to carefully evaluate the assets and underlying processing behind each one, determining what needed to be preserved and what could be adjusted without changing the overall experience. It was this painstaking, and at times seemingly endless, process of making decisions and optimizations one by one that proved to be one of our biggest challenges in delivering a comfortable handheld experience while preserving what makes Wilds feel like Wilds.”

The team had to go through Monster Hunter Wilds with a fine-toothed comb to find areas that could be further optimized. This involved rebuilding entire systems from scratch with “more efficient implementations” in mind, while still making sure that sacrifices in terms of visual fidelity and gameplay quality aren’t substantial.

“We focused our resources on areas that directly affect the gameplay experience. At the same time, we took another, much closer look at areas we had previously considered sufficiently optimized for home-console hardware. To make the game run on handheld hardware, we reassessed every aspect of these areas and replaced certain visual techniques and internal processing with more efficient solutions. We plan to apply the knowledge and expertise gained through this project to the performance improvements that we will be making for existing platforms in the lead-up to the release of Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance.”

The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Monster Hunter Wilds is slated for release on December 4th. Capcom confirmed this release date with a trailer last month showcasing the title running on Nintendo’s platform. The timely release of the game also means that it will be getting the Ascendance expansion when it comes out next year.

While Capcom hasn’t revealed precise performance details about the port yet, a report has indicated that it makes heavy use of dynamic resolutions of between 1080p and 1440p in docked mode, and 720p to 864p in handheld mode, all to ensure that it manages a performance target of between 30 and 40 FPS.

As caught by GamesRadar, Takeuchi revealed to a Japanese publication that the series will eventually get a “crossover” that combines the newer entries with remakes of older titles. This, he said, has been something Capcom has been preparing for since the 2021 release of Resident Evil Village.

“Currently, ‘Resident Evil‘ operates on a two-pronged approach: the numbered titles allow players to experience the ongoing drama of the series, while the remake series lets them experience the past.”

“Eventually, the remake series will catch up to the era of the numbered titles, and the mechanisms for that are already being considered. In fact, preparations for this have been gradually underway since ‘Resident Evil Village,’ including the appearance of names like Umbrella and Spencer, and the reappearance of Raccoon City in ‘Requiem.’ This is all in preparation for a crossover.”

While Takeuchi didn’t make any new announcements regarding the remakes, his statement might indicate to some that Capcom is looking at how it could bring contentious entries like Resident Evil 5 and 6 to a modern audience. In the meantime, however, the company is still working on its remake of Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. Titled Resident Evil Veronica, it doesn’t yet have a release date, and rumors have indicated that it might come out in Fall 2027.

The remake has already managed to generate quite a bit of steam, and ended up crossing 2 million wishlists back in August.

The most recent entry in the franchise was Resident Evil Requiem from earlier this year. The title saw Leon Kennedy returning to serve as one of its two protagonists alongside series newcomer Grace Ashcroft. The story of Resident Evil Requiem revolves around a new infection being spread, which is being investigated by Leon. Simultaneously, Grace – an FBI analyst – finds herself captured and trapped in a lavish hospital in the midst of her own investigations into mysterious deaths in the region.

Resident Evil Requiem has gone on to become an incredible hit and has consistently stayed on top of the sales charts across the world, according to reports. A recent report has indicated that it has made $500 million in revenue, becoming the fastest Resident Evil game to do so. The title is also en route to becoming the best earner in the entire franchise, potentially beating out Resident Evil 4 Remake. Capcom had confirmed in July that it had sold more than 8 million copies.

In the meantime, a Resident Evil movie has also hit theatres and is proving to be quite popular with critics and audiences alike. Earlier this week, the film managed to cross the $100 million mark in the domestic box office, dethroning Resident Evil: Afterlife in the process to become the highest-grossing film in the franchise for the US market.

Well, it’s managed that milestone locally as well, per GameSpot, becoming the highest-grossing film in the franchise as far as the United States is concerned. The record previously belonged to Resident Evil: Afterlife, which was…intriguing in its own way thanks to how it brought some fan favorites to the silver screen. Bryan Hodukavich’s story has its charms, however, and is clearly something that appeals to fans given how the numbers are now stacked quite strongly in its favor.

GameSpot has pointed out Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’s $312 million in global sales, but beating that’s certainly a possibility if the new film continues to sustain the forward momentum it has created for itself up until now. We’re rooting for this one, and if you haven’t watched it yet, we find it’s quite easy to recommend thanks to how it can often feel like it’s introducing a new story while staying true to the franchise’s signature terror.

Alinea Analytics estimates it’s crossed $500 million in revenue, reportedly becoming the fastest title in the franchise’s history to reach that number and suggests it will be the franchise’s biggest earner yet. That would mean it beats out Resident Evil 4 Remake, which currently stands at over $600 million, at some point in the near future. The PS5 and Steam versions have reportedly been close in player split, and around 30 percent of the former’s sales were physical copies. That might be an interesting nugget for Sony, which has been seeing some interesting reactions to its all-digital push, although it seems to be quite committed on that front.

Those sales numbers aren’t really surprising to us, especially after it crossed eight million copies sold just a few months ago. Well, Requiem has certainly been a great addition to the franchise, and we hope to see it reach many more milestones in the years ahead.

“We’ve been working hard on bringing the lessons learned from the launch of Monster Hunter Wilds to bear on Ascendance, and it just takes a lot of time and research to examine what it is you need to achieve on PC to make the game perform well on a variety of hardware. It’s just a matter of experience really, so I’m hoping that we can bring those lessons forward into Ascendance.”

Performance wasn’t the only area where the Monster Hunter Wilds team took player feedback to heart. Executive director Kaname Fujioka spoke about how aspects like UI and UX, and even the development of the Boost Bracer mechanic, were a result of the team wanting to improve on what was already considered strong foundational gameplay from the base game.

“I think the action gameplay itself was one of the best received aspects of the base game. So, building on that and adding in the Boost Bracer mechanic has just been our way to make the action gameplay even more dynamic, and it adds an opportunity for players to create more windows of opportunity to do big damage as they use up the boost gauge on special powerful actions.

“On a more zoomed-out level, UI and UX improvements are something that we were able to do based on feedback from the original game and helped the game’s menus and systems get more out of the player’s way and let them get into the action. We’ve done a lot of work on making the UI hopefully more accessible and letting that, combined with the new upgraded action, create a totally improved experience.”

Over the course of September, Capcom has released several trailers for Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance showcasing how the Boost Bracer will bring in more combat options across all 14 of its weapon types. The most recent of these gave us a look at how the new gameplay system will add even more explosive power to the Switch Axe and the Gunlance.

When it comes to monsters, Ascendance will feature a mix of returning ones as well as entirely new creatures. Long-time fans of the series will be happy to see Lao-Shan Lung coming back after its previous appearance in Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, alongside series stalwarts like Teostra and Kushala Daora. As for new ones, Gundoraja and Arakeeta are among the newcomers arriving with the expansion, with the former being an Elder Dragon.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. Capcom confirmed that the base game will be coming to the Switch 2 on December 4th.

Allegedly hearing it “three times from three different people,” they noted there’s a “high chance” Veronica has slipped to Fall 2027. Previous reports claimed it would launch in the first half of 2027 – a typical period for past titles. Though they haven’t heard it directly, the insider is “coming to believe it’s true.”

It may also explain the remake’s absence at Tokyo Game Show, which hasn’t happened with any other “mainline” Resident Evil in the past. As for why, Capcom was allegedly making “some late changes to the game; the scope and time to do such were a bit in the air.” Thus, this may have taken longer than the team expected.

Such is the case with game development, but as Dusk Golem notes, “This definitely was not their plan from the start.” One can only speculate on how ambitious the changes were, but as always, since the publisher never announced a release date, this isn’t officially a delay.

Officially, Resident Evil Veronica launches next year for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Perhaps we’ll hear more about it at The Game Awards, complete with a release window. Stay tuned for updates in the meantime.

As caught by IGN, the film brought in $60 million in the domestic US box office, and $48.3 million from international markets. The impressive performance has even outdone initial projections, which expected the movie to make between $40 million and $50 million in the domestic box office for its opening weekend.

There are likely many factors that contributed to the success of Cregger’s movie, and a strong critical reception also likely helped quite a bit. At the time of publishing, the film has a 95 percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 91 percent audience rating. Many have praised the Resident Evil film for being able to accurately capture what makes the game franchise so popular, and some reviews also praised the balance of comedy and horror that the movie is able to find.

Cregger has been quite vocal in the run up to the film’s release that he didn’t want to directly adapt any of the Resident Evil games. Rather, he wanted to tell an original story that would accurately capture the atmosphere and vibes of the survival horror franchise. This means that, in his own words, Cregger took quite a few liberties when it came to the movie’s setting.

“It’s not 1998. It takes place in modern times. I know that, during the events of Resident Evil 2, it’s not snowing, and yet, in this movie, I thought it would be better for the story and for the visuals, you know, whatever I’m doing, if it were snowy. It’s going to be a better movie for it.”

He went on to explain that he didn’t want to use any of the iconic characters from the games because he didn’t believe he could do it better than how Capcom portrayed them.

“I am not trying to adapt a video game. I’m not using the characters from the games. I’m not telling a story that the games tell because I’m not going to be able to do it better than the games. The games are so well executed, and to me, Leon and Claire and these characters, they exist so perfectly in the games that anyone I cast and any difference that I do with them would be, probably, to the detriment of what I was trying to do.”

Just last month, Cregger also spoke about how much he loves the Resident Evil games, and how hard he worked along with the production crew to make sure that the film can capture the feeling of playing one of the games.

“The games always kind of have this progression where you start with a pistol, and then you graduate to a shotgun, and then you graduate to a machine gun. There’s a lot of items from the games. [The protagonist] is constantly coming up against these padlocks that are stopping him from progressing.”

Updates like Lagiacrus and Omega Planetes shook things up further, and though they received complaints for going overboard on the damage, Gogmazios seemingly fared better. So how is director Takuro Hiraoka addressing the difficulty with Ascendance? First, he noted that balancing this is “one of the most challenging things to get right in a game,” via translator to PC Gamer. The goal was to ensure that those who bought the game didn’t find themselves in a situation where they couldn’t finish it.

“In my mind, that’s where the difficulty curve should be for Wilds, and I think we achieved that—but the player base was so good and so skilled. We had a bit of a gap in expectations. Maybe players got better than we expected in the intervening years. We’ve grown the audience greatly since Monster Hunter: World, and that was a game where a lot of players dropped off before finishing the story because it got too hard too quickly. We’re trying to tackle that issue, which I see as a problem.”

After the base game released – and didn’t exactly have the same sales tail as either Monster Hunter World or Rise – the team wants to appease both sides and “not just the hardest of the hardcore.”

“We expect that if you purchase the DLC, you’re going to want to see as much of the story that we’ve presented as possible—but for players who want to go far beyond and have the really toughest challenges, we expect that the endgame loop is what really satisfies their needs. We’re working on that balance at the minute.”

What you’ll actually spend time with in the endgame is another big question that needs to be answered. Another criticism of Wilds is that it launched with scarcely anything to do, especially since Artian Weapons were easy to craft, and only three or four monsters posed any threat in their Tempered status. Then again, Monster Hunter World and Rise faced similar issues at launch, which the Iceborne and Sunbreak expansions addressed. So time will tell.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance is out in 2027 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Thus far, Capcom has confirmed returning Elder Dragons such as Kushala Daora, Lao-Shan Lung, and more recently Teostra, though players can expect fresh challenges like Araketa and Gundoraja.

Having projected 57,628 job losses for the period, Satvat has now noted that a similar number of jobs have also been created. This has led to the industry growing “very modestly, by a small number of thousands of people.” Satvat’s ASGC Games Industry Layoffs Tracker has noted that 66 percent of the layoffs between 2022 and 2026 happened in North America, affecting 79 percent of the industry’s workforce. North America and Europe together seemingly account for 96 percent of all layoffs across the industry.

“There was a 12-to-18-month period where I estimated that over half of layoffs, globally, were in California,” explained Satvat. “I think this is as bad as the ’83 crash if you’re a game developer based in North America or western Europe, in a traditional triple-A studio. That is ground zero for the destruction.”

Japan, on the other hand, is seemingly doing much better. “Everyone calls out Nintendo, but you can look at Konami or Capcom – these companies all have staff retention of 97 per cent plus. My understanding is that, generally, Japanese teams tend to be much smaller and leaner. They didn’t get swept up in the live-service trend, or into these mega-blockbusters with 500-person teams.” The country also noted that while executives in Japanese gaming companies “still make great money”, they don’t tend to make as much as, for example, EA CEO Andrew Wilson, who made almost $40 million in the last fiscal year. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, in contrast, made $2 million.

Satvat’s mention of the video game crash of 1983 is also worth noting, since even that largely revolved around Western markets for the gaming industry collapsing due to a number of factors. The industry was largely revived only thanks to Japanese companies like Nintendo entering the market with their at-the-time brand-new console, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The modern games industry might bear a striking resemblance to the crash, with many Western companies going through hardships, leading to several layoffs and potential studio closures. On the other hand, the popularity of games made by Japanese teams is quite high again, and companies like Capcom have even ended up releasing four critically acclaimed games in 2026 alone.

As for Western studios, Build a Rocket Boy went through a fresh round of layoffs, and questions have now popped up about the studio’s overall survival. Similarly, DON’T NOD announced a massive restructuring that will result in job cuts, with its survival beyond January 2027 having “material uncertainty”. And lest we forget, Microsoft went through massive layoffs just a couple of months ago with around 1,600 cuts, and another 1,600 planned for the rest of the fiscal year.

If you’ve bought vouchers in the past, the update will give you a little present. You’ll also receive a few for free to keep editing characters until the expansion drops. The change marks an intention to make switching things up more seamless and less expensive in the game ahead of Ascendance, which has a lot to add to the mix.

That includes the Boost Bracer and the way it transforms the movesets of weapons like the Switch Axe and Dual Blades. Having the freedom to change how your character looks to keep things aligned with your build and the backstory you make up in your head will definitely be welcome when the expansion drops next year.

This is a welcome change to a game where you have so many different ways to become a force to be reckoned with. More details can be found in the full announcement here.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance launches in 2027 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. Until then, Switch 2 users can join the hunt starting December 4th and catch up.