Capcom has officially confirmed they’re extending playtime for Monster Hunter Wilds’ second Open Beta Test.
Yesterday, Capcom was talking about this offer after seeing that their players were not able to play the beta for a little over a day because of the PSN outage. Apparently they didn’t complete the commitment yet because they hadn’t decided on how to do it until now.
They made this announcement on the official Monster Hunter Twitter account:
“Hunters, we’re pleased to confirm that due to the PlayStation Network outage that occurred during the first week of OBT2, we’re extending the second week of OBT2 by +24 hours on all platforms!
New period:
Feb. 13, 7pm PT / Feb. 14, 3am GMT – Feb. 17, 6:59 pm PT / Feb. 18, 2:59 am GMT”
The original four day period for the open beta that goes through this weekend is now going to be five days of open beta. And Capcom also decided to offer this extra 24 hour playtime for players on all platforms, even if only PlayStation 5 players were affected by the outage.
It does seem that this was the easiest way for them to set it up. Capcom would have had to do some PR to explain why PlayStation 5 players got an extra 24 hours while other players did not. Furthermore, since this is an online multiplayer game, of course it would benefit the beta players if there were more people playing with them.
It goes without saying that this was a generous decision that is likely to earn extra goodwill with fans. Practically speaking, not every player will be able to take advantage of that extended playtime going through the first day of the workweek. But just for being good PR, even those players will also have positive impressions of Capcom and Monster Hunter Wilds.
The beta has not gone without any other controversy, though this may not be a big problem in the long run. As The Gamer reported, Steam players saw that Monster Hunter Wilds still had a lot of the performance issues they observed in the first open beta playtest late last year. Other social noise also indicated PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X players also noticed performance was not optimal.
Capcom promised that the version of the game arriving this February 28, 2025, will be considerably more improved across the board. In fact, Monster Hunter Wilds is certified PlayStation 5 Pro Enhanced, and Capcom says players can toggle ray tracing and other features. We’ll see how much that turns out to be true later this month.
