As always, the legitimacy is up in the air, and we’ll need official confirmation from the publisher. However, this follows the same pattern as previous titles and the base game, where Capcom offered a handful of hunts for players to test their mettle against.

For example, the first beta test for Wilds included Chatacabra, Doshagum and Rey Dau as targets. The second added Arkveld as a high-threat target and a training area to test new techniques. Pre-made loadouts were provided, usually unoptimized so you wouldn’t completely trounce the monsters.

Ascendance’s beta would be a great way to get familiar with the new Boost Bracer, which opens up several new moves for each weapon type. Its hunts could potentially include Araketa, Guardian Rathian and maybe even Kushala Daora as a high-level enemy.

If this listing is legitimate, Capcom may announce it at The Game Awards in December (unless a separate Monster Hunter Showcase is coming beforehand). Ascendance launches in 2027 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2, so we may even get a release date. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Going by its Platinum Titles list, Wilds has sold 11.8 million as of June 30th, 2026. That would mean an additional 400,000 units sold in the second fiscal quarter ending September 30th. Compare this to Monster Hunter Rise, a 2021 title that originally launched on fewer platforms, which sold 700,000 copies in the same period (plus six days) and topped 20 million sales.

Of course, Capcom isn’t too worried. It notes that, “Following the announcements of the Nintendo Switch 2 version and the massive expansion Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance, pricing measures helped improve the pace of sales and increase the number of concurrent players.” It’s also looking to roll out “promotional initiatives for Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance as we aim to expand sales over the medium-to-long-term.”

It’s no secret that the action RPG’s sales drastically fell after an explosive launch due to lower difficulty, lackluster endgame and performance issues. To its credit, the development team has added challenging new monsters, quests and mechanics. Performance is also better, especially on PC, so much so that the Steam rating finally reached “Mostly Positive” almost 18 months after launch.

Regardless, it still has work to do. Monster Hunter Wilds launches on December 4th for Nintendo Switch 2, with a free Prologue demo out now. As for Ascendance, it’s out in 2027 for all platforms.

The Prologue Demo will include the early parts of Monster Hunter Wilds, giving players the explanation for why they are in the Forbidden Lands to begin with, and will allow them to experience some of the early-game hunts. Since it also allows for multiplayer gameplay, it is likely to include some optional hunts as well, giving players more chances to try out the 14 weapons and see what play style suits them best.

Capcom has gone through quite a bit of trouble to bring Monster Hunter Wilds over to the Nintendo Switch 2. When the title was first released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S last year, it was plagued with several technical issues. The company has since then released updates to sort these issues out, improving performance across all platforms in the process. Producer Genki Sunano has spoken about how the optimization process for the Nintendo Switch 2 version was “painstaking”.

“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.”

The development team had to take a look at finer details of Monster Hunter Wilds to see what could be culled in order to improve the performance of the game on Nintendo’s platform.

“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.”

In the meantime, Capcom is also working on an expansion for Monster Hunter Wilds, dubbed Ascendance, which will bring with it Master Rank difficulty quests, along with several additions to the game’s roster of monsters, and even the Boost Bracer, which brings in massive changes to the movesets of just about every weapon in the game. The expansion is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027, and director Takuro Hiraoka has promised that it will offer a balance of story and endgame challenges.

Best of all, there’s support for local play, making it easier to team up with friends who also own a Switch 2. If you’re fully convinced by the performance (which the development team said was “painstaking” to achieve), digital pre-orders go live on the same day.

Monster Hunter Wilds is out on December 4th for the console, though you can play it now on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. It’s probably worth waiting until Ascendance, its paid expansion, launches in 2027. A release date has yet to be announced, but it’s confirmed to feature the Skybound Eyrie as a new locale and Master Rank Quests.

While it features newcomers like Araketa and Gundoraja, the new Elder Dragon, you can also expect series regulars like Kushala Daora, Teostra and even Lao-Shan Lung to be a nuisance. Thankfully, the Boost Bracer should help even the odds. Check out what it can do with the Switch Axe, Gunlance, and Sword and Shield, among other weapons.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

The Emperor of Flame, or Toaster as most fans refer to it, is best known for its Supernova attack – a wide-ranging explosion emanating from its core that deals massive damage. It joins Kushala Daora and Lao-Shan Lung in Ascendance, alongside newcomer Gundoraja.

Speaking of Lao-Shan Lung, the expansion kicks off with its sudden appearance in the Forbidden Lands. Despite the Expedition team’s best efforts, they’re defeated and must retreat. The story properly begins years later when they build Madoi Stronghold and await a rematch against the Elder Dragon. If you were wondering why characters like Nata look older and have new hairstyles, that’s why.

Of course, Lao-Shan Lung’s appearance has caused disturbances throughout the land, including changes to the Guardians (with a disgusting-looking monster emerging from a Doshaguma). While detailing the new Boosted Actions, Capcom confirmed that Title Updates will add more and balance adjustments. You can also expect quality-of-life improvements like faster weapon swapping from your Seikret, changing equipment outside of the tent, and more detailed monster hide toughness information.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance launches in 2027 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. You can look forward to live gameplay at Capcom’s stage at Tokyo Game Show on September 19th, so stay tuned for more details in the coming days.

We’ve already seen it transform the move set on weapons like the Dual Blades and Gunlance, making those weapons work well for those of us who prefer to avoid taking damage while dishing out some of our own. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great tool to have on your wrist if you’re the type who likes to get up close and personal with your prey. The latest showcase of the Switch Axe in action with a bit of a boost from the Bracer is proof of that, and it’s quite the show!

The axe is nasty enough on its own, and you now get more damage-dealing flourishes with each attack that could see you deleting health bars on even the most troublesome monsters. It might even give the new Elder Dragon, Gundoraja, a concussion in the right hands.

There’s still no news on a concrete release date other than 2027, but we’re hoping that things change soon. Until then, we’re going to be watching the showcase below and thinking of ways in which we can make the Switch Axe work in our favor, new moves and all.