In March last year, Monster Hunter World reached an extraordinary milestone. Having shipped 7.9m copies, it became Capcom’s best-selling game of all time – surpassing not only all previous entries in the Monster Hunter franchise, but also every single Resident Evil title.
A year on, Monster Hunter World is still a massive game that consistently ranks in Steam’s top 10 most-played list, with a concurrent player count of 51k (at time of writing). And the developer’s also showing no signs of slowing down: with the massive paid expansion Iceborne set to launch in full on 6th September, and the promise of free updates in future.
To reflect on Monster Hunter World’s continuing success and Capcom’s future plans for the franchise, I sat down with producer Ryozo Tsujimoto and directors Kaname Fujioka and Daisuke Ichihara at this year’s Gamescom, where we discussed everything from crunch to next-generation games.
Monster Hunter World has done incredibly well in terms of sales – did these surpass your expectations?
Tsujimoto: With World, we were really pushing to bring the series global, so it’s the first time we’ve had a simultaneous global release for a Monster Hunter game in the west and in Japan, and we of course wanted to make it a big success – with every title in the series we’ve wanted to bring it to more people than the previous one, so we wanted to have an upward tick on the chart for sure. Still, it’s now Capcom’s best-selling game in history with over 10m sold, I think the current figure is 13m. So that absolutely blew away our expectations. But we’re not resting on our laurels, we want to make sure that with the expansion, people who still haven’t got on board with Monster Hunter still have a chance to see how great the game is.
Would you say that Monster Hunter World has “cracked the west”?
Tsujimoto: There will always be more people left who haven’t played the game – who don’t know about it, who aren’t interested yet – and as I said, we don’t want to sit back and be satisfied with our own achievements. I think it’s been the best success in the west yet for the entire series, but we’re always looking forward to see how we can make things bigger and better.
Moving on to Iceborne, the expansion has a fair level requirement (Hunter Rank 16) before you can begin the story – so what can it offer lower-level players?
Tsujimoto: As you said, to play the Iceborne content itself you need to have beaten the story of World, so that’s Hunter Rank 16, and you’ve beaten the final boss. If you’ve got World and you’ve got a save data along the way, or you’ve never even played World, or you’ve never thought of it, all of the changes and updates and new moves and actions are still back-ported into World’s content: for example, the clutch claw that you’ve seen in all the gameplay videos (the grappling hook mechanic), or the new weapon balances and features that we’re discussing in our developer diaries. Things like the view mode and screenshots, and tweaks to various options. All of that stuff isn’t locked into the Iceborne section, it’s there from the start of the World story if you want to use it, or if you’re already part-way through you can pick up and use all the new Iceborne content. While of course the new monsters and story content is the main reason to get it, I think you shouldn’t be put off that you can’t get it until you beat World. Get it first, and then use it to get through World in a fresh new way.
As Monster Hunter World was seen to open up the series to more players, and more casual players, I was wondering if Iceborne is an effort to appeal to the traditional “hardcore” Monster Hunter player base?
Fujioka and Ichihara [the interpreter combined their answers]: Well, Iceborne is adding the Master Rank to the game, and it’s kind of equivalent to what used to be called G-Rank, and in the old days there’d be a standard title – say, Monster Hunter 3 or Monster Hunter 4, and then a new title would be released in the west called Ultimate version – in Japan it was the G version. That’s still the basic structure, but it isn’t like Iceborne is endgame content, it isn’t something that is only playable if you’ve completely mastered everything about the game and you’re a super hardcore player. I think if you’re someone who’s played a lot and enjoyed it and you’ve beaten the game, no matter whether you are within that hardcore fan level, or you consider yourself not that hardcore, Iceborne is still for you. Iceborne itself has its own endgame content, which is the super challenging stuff that fans can beat after the story is cleared in the same way as World did, but Iceborne is definitely for anyone who likes Monster Hunter World and wants more, bigger and better.