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The Monster Hunter series is revered by fans, and
closely safeguarded by Capcom. The series has so far been benefit to
a PlayStation2 release and two PlayStation Portable titles in Europe
– of which, it is highly regarded that Monster Hunter: Freedom
and Monster Hunter: Freedom 2 alone “saved” the
PlayStation Portable system in Japan; a feat that not even the
mighty Final Fantasy series was able to accomplish, despite
also having pretty enviable sales figures. After the cancellation of
the one-time exclusive PLAYSTATION3 title, Monster Hunter 3,
and it’s realignment for Nintendo’s Wii, most were expecting to see
it on show at this year’s E3, at least in video format.
However, it was confirmed some days before the show that
Monster Hunter 3 would not be available at any point. And so,
you may well ask why
Electronic Theatre has still decided to cover the title? And
of course, that answer is one which many of our regulars will be
very aware of by now: the lack of anything official doesn’t stop
Electronic Theatre journalists digging, and finding tasty
new titbits on your behalf.
Being heavily advocated by Capcom as the official third
title in the franchise – despite it lacking the common denominator
of the series previous outings, by not appearing on a SONY console –
Monster Hunter 3 was unveiled for Wii back in October 2007,
by none other than Satoru Iwata. However, when it came to Capcom
officially backing this statement, it was also mentioned that, while
Monster Hunter 3 is a Wii exclusive, the Monster Hunter
series as a whole is part of Capcom’s “multi-format strategy”.
We were informed that the development team had been “working
tirelessly” to make intuitive uses of Wii’s unique features in-game,
however, we now believe that the title wasn’t shown in order to
allow room for an additional title in the series to reach a point at
which it is demonstrational.
The PLAYSTATION3 version was canned, apparently, “Due to
the high development costs of titles for PS3”, stated by Managing
Corporate Officer Katsuhiko Ichii on Thomson Financial. However,
with the sales of the series escalating above 4.5 million units
worldwide, this may well seem like an unreasonable resolution. With
this multi-format approach in mind, and the high sales rate of both
the NintendoDS and Wii not only in Japan, but globally, could it be
that a NintendoDS version is in the works also? When putting this to
a Capcom representative, we were simply met with an expected “No
comment.” Right now, all this is speculation; however, we would be
surprised if Capcom didn’t have big plans for the series at the
upcoming Tokyo Game Show, which takes place this October. |
