PS5 is too expensive and a ‘barrier’ for Monster Hunter players says Capcom

While the PS5 is said to be creating obstacles for Capcom, the company president has only nice things to say about the Switch 2.

At 10 million units sold worldwide, it’s hard to imagine anything else outselling Monster Hunter Wilds this year. And yet despite a strong launch in February, and positive reviews, popular opinion on the game has increasingly turned sour in recent months.

Not only did the active player count take a sharp tumble (at least on PC), but sales have also slowed faster than you’d expect. Capcom has described new sales as ‘soft’, with the game being outperformed by old Resident Evil and Devil May Cry games.

Players have blamed Monster Hunter Wilds’ poor PC performance and lack of endgame content (both of which Capcom has tried to rectify) but the company also believes a contributing factor is the PlayStation 5’s high price tag.

The PlayStation 5 has never been cheap, with the standard model originally priced at £449.99, while the digital-only model cost £359.99. Since then, however, these prices have risen to £479.99 and £429.99, respectively.

This is also ignoring the more powerful PS5 Pro, which launched at a whopping £699.99.

In a recent interview with Nikkei Gaming, Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto acknowledged that Monster Hunter Wilds met its goal of 10 million sales in a month, but this was achieved in spite of the ‘unexpectedly large’ barrier that was the PlayStation 5 price tag.

This is unfortunate for Capcom, since Tsujimoto confirmed that Sony’s console is considered the ‘main platform’ for the game.

‘The console costs about 80,000 [£403] in Japanese yen,’ said Tsujimoto (via Google Translate). ‘When you factor in the cost of software and monthly subscriptions, it comes to about 100,000 yen [£503] at the time of purchase.

‘This is not an amount that can be easily reached, especially for younger generations. This situation is not limited to Japan but is similar overseas as well.’

As such, Capcom is trying to formulate strategies to get more people playing Monster Hunter Wilds, although Tsujimoto only alluded to future ‘sales,’ implying there’ll be more temporary price cuts like the one in June.

Capcom does hope to attract fans of Final Fantasy 14 with a special collaboration it announced during Gamescom, which will see a new monster, Omega Planetes, be added to Monster Hunter Wilds later this month.

You have to imagine Capcom has at least considered trying to get Monster Hunter Wilds running on Nintendo Switch 2, since Tsujimoto mentions how the new console’s sales were ‘better than we had expected’ and ‘reaffirmed the high level of cost-consciousness among ordinary consumers.’

While the Switch 2 is certainly more powerful than its predecessor, it’s not so powerful that it can run high-end PlayStation 5 games easily, which is why most third party ports confirmed for it so far are for games that were also built for the PlayStation 4, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

If Monster Hunter Wilds were ever ported to Switch 2, it would likely require a lot of compromises, particularly regarding its performance, and risk being seen as an inferior version.

Although it’s not an exclusive, Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection was announced at July’s Nintendo Direct, but that’s a role-playing game and not likely to be very popular in the West.

What now seems very likely though, is that Capcom will do what it did with Monster Hunter Rise and strike a deal with Nintendo for a temporary Switch 2 exclusive Monster Hunter game, before bringing it to other platforms after a couple of years.

As for other upcoming Capcom games, Resident Evil: Requiem, Pragmata, and the new Onimusha are also being built for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, so Switch 2 ports of those seem unlikely. We’d be shocked, though, if the Ōkami sequel skips Nintendo’s platform.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

MORE: New Resident Evil strategy game announced – but there’s a catch

MORE: Every new video game for 2025 and 2026 from Sony, Nintendo and major publishers

MORE: Next gen Xbox price rumours are shocking but good news for PS6