One of the big shifts the game industry has seen over the past decade is that many Japanese developers are now fully embracing PC versions of the their games. While Capcom took some time to warm up to day-and-date PC releases for Monster Hunter, as Monster Hunter Wilds approaches the studio's fully embracing the platform.
As part of our recent interview with the Monster Hunter Wilds devs, we asked producer Ryozo Tsujimoto if he'd agree that PC is a major growth platform for Japanese games. "Yeah, there are more players than ever playing on PC, including in Japan," Tsujimoto said. "so we definitely see room for the series to capture new players who haven't tried it before if that's their chosen platform."
That's part of why Capcom was so keen to implement crossplay in Wilds, so that "the choice is yours on which platform you want to play with, and then [you can just] go online and hunt with your friends."
Monster Hunter in particular has found big success on PC. Comparing peak concurrent players on SteamDB is very much an unscientific process, but it helps illustrate just how well Monster Hunter has done on the platform. The recent Monster Hunter Wilds beta reached a peak of 463,798 players, eclipsing the peak of the megahit Helldivers 2. And yeah, the beta's free, but Monster Hunter World hit a peak of 334,684 at its launch, eclipsing the biggest number that Skyrim or Starfield ever managed.
Capcom's been taking some extra steps to give PC players a good experience with Wilds, reducing the game's system requirements and releasing a big ol' benchmarking tool just ahead of the recent beta. Here's hoping Japanese developers keep up this kind of support for the platform.
The director of Monster Hunter Wilds was sneaking around the beta: "There are players out there who'd have no idea to this day that they were actually playing with the director."
