Capcom’s next big title has a promising start in the leadup to 2025.
SteamDB data shows that the Monster Hunter Wilds Beta has done very well on Steam. It has only been a few hours but it peaked at concurrent 463,798 players.
To put that in context, Black Myth Wukong launched on Steam with a massive 2,415,714 concurrent players. But that information has always been shared as if it maintained those incredible numbers for a sustained period of time.
SteamDB data shows that those numbers steadily dipped, as Black Myth Wukong’s players progressively lost interest. Apparently, most of those players were Chinese gamers who may have joined Steam for the first time for this title, and as the weeks scrolled, playtime dipped.
Black Myth Wukong did exceedingly well, but the situation with Monster Hunter Wilds will be considerably different. As a live service title with regular DLC updates, Capcom is incentivized to keep their players’ sustained interest. They may never reach the peaks of Black Myth Wukong, but Monster Hunter Wilds is likely to make more money in the long run.
Monster Hunter Wilds comes four years after the release of Monster Hunter Rise, a title made for the Switch catered to portable play. But it will also be coming seven years after the release of Monster Hunter World, the big breakout title for the franchise, that drew together players from different platforms, and realized its potential as a live service title with an active community.
Monster Hunter World is, of course, playable on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. However, Monster Hunter Wilds will be the first game made specifically for these current generation platforms. Subsequently, we can expect a higher standard in performance, and a more ambitious design that would supposedly be catered to the specs of these newer machines.
We will note that early impressions for the beta on the base PlayStation 5 reveals that there are actually some performance issues on the console. Some fans are speculating that this might prod them to move to a PlayStation 5 Pro. However, that may be a hasty decision, since the beta won’t be the same game that it will be upon its official launch.
As this Push Square report on the topic notes, they aren’t sure that the PlayStation 5 Pro can resolve the issues. And they would say that because this may not be about the specs of the PlayStation 5, as much as it is Capcom optimizing the game itself.
And we couldn’t help bringing up Black Myth Wukong earlier, because it would be more accurate to say that it has less problems on PlayStation 5, than it would be to claim that it performs better there than on PC. Capcom would have more resources than Game Science to resolve these issues, so we would still hold out hope that the game will be fine on all its platforms when it finally comes out next year.
