Monster Hunter World has had a successful first few weeks, to say the least. The game managed to overtake PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds as the top-selling game on the Xbox One store, and it has already shipped 6 million units. That isn’t just impressive for publisher Capcom: It’s the fastest pace for any game in the company’s history.
It isn’t clear how many of those 6 million units have been sold to consumers — the statistic just means they have been sent to retailers. However, in the first three days of sale, Capcom had already shipped 5 million units. The additional million copies likely means that those initial units had already sold through to players. The game has attracted a wider following due to its more accessible gameplay systems as well as its release on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 rather than a portable system. It managed to top Dragon Ball FighterZ for the most-downloaded PlayStation 4 game in January, also beating out heavy hitters like Madden NFL 18 and Call of Duty: WWII.
The previous game in the series, the spin-off Monster Hunter Stories, didn’t perform particularly well for Capcom. The Switch game Monster Hunter XX — a port of a 3DS game — also sold poorly, though it wasn’t released outside of Japan.
Capcom clearly wants Monster Hunter to be as big, if not bigger, than its Resident Evil and Street Fighter series, with plans already in the works for a Hollywood movie as well as the Universal Studios Japan “Monster Hunter: The Real” attraction. We’re crossing our fingers that the monsters aren’t actually real.
Currently, the best-selling Capcom game of all time is Resident Evil 5 with 7.3 million units sold, followed closely by Resident Evil 6 with 7.1 million units sold. Assuming Monster Hunter World has already managed to sell 5 million copies, it would be the fourth-best-selling Capcom game of all time after only a few weeks on store shelves. The Monster Hunter series as a whole has managed to sell 40 million units, tying it with Street Fighter. Both are significantly behind the Resident Evil series’ 82 million units.
Monster Hunter World is available now on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A PC version will release later in 2018.
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