How do you know if a game is a true, undeniable hit? Sales typically are the way to answer that unequivocally, as a game can have good reviews, or even decent reviews, yet never make it to high levels of sales. When it comes to games like Monster Hunter Wilds, it’s a title that has had plenty of hype thanks to both the success of past entries and the fact that the trailers for the game looked really good and teased an incredible experience. When you add that to the phenomenal reviews that the game got on Metacritic and the beta that went for a pretty long time, and you know that players were literally chomping at the bit to get the game.
The good news is that this helped the game become the fastest-selling title in Capcom’s long history. And you don’t have to take our word for it. Capcom released a statement about the game and confirmed this high-selling milestone:
“Following the game’s announcement, Capcom promoted the appeal of Monster Hunter Wilds to a broad audience worldwide, exhibiting the title at global video game events and holding an online open beta test to give many players a chance to try it while also providing updates on game information via the online events such as Monster Hunter Wilds Showcase. As a result of these continuous global initiatives, Monster Hunter Wilds has evoked massive excitement and achieved sales of 8 million units in 3 days, the fastest any game has done so in Capcom’s history.”
That’s impressive, no matter how you look at it. For context, while the last entry in the franchise did sell well over 8 million, including selling eight million on the Nintendo Switch alone, it wasn’t this quick! Or even get close to this quickly.
What does this prove about the game? First, it proves that the franchise has truly grown and expanded its player base with the last two mainline entries, both of which helped break some of the “new player barriers” that limited how successful games were in the past. Second, it shows that Capcom really did well in expanding the game’s abilities and styles, as there were plenty of new things within the game to make it stand out more. Finally, Capcom marketed it well and ensured gamers were hyped for it.
To be fair, there are some flaws within the game, including on the Steam version, where Capcom is racing to fix some performance issues. Even still, this is a milestone moment for Capcom, and that should be celebrated.
