Niantic Labs and Capcom have revealed Monster Hunter Now, the newest franchise augmented reality game and collaboration for the mobile developer.
As reported by Techraptor, Niantic’s John Hanke was joined by Monster Hunter producer Ryozo Tsujimoto, and Niantic Japan employees in a press event where they detailed the new game.
Similar to how Pokemon Go was in the works for years prior to reveal, Hanke had proposed the game to Tsujimoto, and set the project rolling four years ago. This is set to be the most mainstream push for Monster Hunter the franchise has ever seen.
As with other Niantic games, players will be taking their Monster Hunter Now app with them to real world locations, where they play out a simplified version of the franchise’s gameplay cycle. You can find resources, fight monsters as you encounter the, and then craft weapons and upgrades from monster parts and resources.
Improving on the shortcomings of Pokemon Go, Niantic promises that they have worked on the Wayspot database system for Monster Hunter Now so that rural players will also have many opportunities to fight monsters.
A major difference between Monster Hunter Now and most Monster Hunter games is you now only have 75 seconds to defeat a monster. We don’t know exactly how Capcom and Niantic have balanced this out, but they claim to have taken the real world travel aspect of the gameplay into account. That may explain why the fights are considerably shorter, but it says nothing about the range of the difficulty curve.
It does seem that you can go back to monster locations as you will have the chance to mark a monster when you come across one. In fact, if the app is open while you’re traveling, your Palico companion can mark monsters for you even if you aren’t paying attention.
Open beta is available starting today, by registering your Google or Apple account on the Monster Hunter Now website. The website also indicates the official launch will be on September this year.
However, not everything is rosy for Niantic and Capcom. Here are the comments shared by game industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto:
“Capcom stock closed +9.01% today in Tokyo to reach an all-time high of 5,140 yen on this news.
All games Niantic launched after Pokemon Go failed, including mega-IPs.
Capcom tried Monster Hunter on mobile several times, too.
Put these things together, it still won’ work.”
Surprisingly negative response there, but Dr. Toto has some basis to ground his reaction. You may already know about the shuttered Wizards Unite, and the ongoing AR game Pikmin Bloom. Pikmin Bloom is a modest success, having made $ 5.3 million, but doing so in a market with higher expectations.
Many other Niantic games have been cancelled, including collaborations with author James Frey, and a different Transformers game.
Niantic has other games coming as well, including Peridot and NBA All-World, but it remains to be seen if the studio can find a way to replicate the success of Pokemon Go.
