Capcom head thinks PS5 prices are to blame for low Monster Hunter Wilds sales

If you take a look at the Steam reviews for Monster Hunter Wilds, you will probably come to the conclusion that the game's dwindling sales are due to unaddressed performance issues and a lack of optimisation. Capcom's leads think differently though, pinning the blame on the cost of PS5 consoles. 

In an interview with Japanese news outlet, Nikkei (via VGC), Capcom President, Haruhito Tsujimoto, was asked about Monster Hunter Wilds sales performance, saying that while the game did achieve Capcom's internal goal of 10-million copies sold in its first month, the company has run into trouble building on those initial sales. According to Tsujimoto, this is due to “barriers to the PS5”.

I struggle to understand this line of thinking. Yes, the PS5 is more expensive than a PS4. However, the actual sales numbers between the two consoles are very similar. Over its first five years on the market (2013-2018), the PS4 sold 82 million units worldwide. The PS5 has been on the market for just shy of five years and has sold over 80 million units so far. Clearly, Sony is having no trouble selling PS5 consoles, even at higher prices than the PS4, so I'm really not sure what ‘barriers to the PS5' Tsujimoto is imagining.

Monster Hunter Wilds (2025) was the follow-up to Monster Hunter World (2018), intended for high-end consoles (PS5, Xbox Series X/S) and PC. The game ultimately launched with dire performance issues, particularly on PC, where the game seems to entirely rely on Frame Generation to achieve decent frame rates. While Monster Hunter Wilds had great success at launch, negative word of mouth spread, and sales numbers have been dropping ever since.

While Capcom's president does not acknowledge the complaints around optimisation, the Monster Hunter Wilds development team actually has, albeit six months late. The team is now working on properly optimising the game to reduce both CPU usage and GPU usage, which should in turn enable better performance. However, the developers also warned that these changes could take a long time to develop and implement.

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KitGuru Says: Monster Hunter Wilds should have been gunning for GOTY this year but given how little progress has been made on the issues that have been present since launch, I'd be surprised if it got a nomination. 

 

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