For a portion of the gamebase it might draw sales, i think it's hard to argue it'd do so for a majority though.

As for hunting action genre.... again, that's oversimplistic thinking.

How many people do you know that only like one genre of game?  A vast minority, right?

Buying systems and platforms are complex situations, that's why console makers can fuck up so badly and it tends to be hard to pick which console will win, even when you pretty much know what each platfrom provider will provide.

It's more akin to renting an apartment then buying a single item.  You've got a  complex number of issues to make when you decide to buy a system.

We're talking about a specific series that has shown very steady sales despite a platform change. So whatever fans it might have lost (and I doubt it lost many) from the jump to Nintendo, it made up for with new fans. It hasn't brought a whole new audience to the franchise or shown some kind of tremendous growth. It's being bought by largely the same people who bought it on the PSP.

So what is the argument that it would have performed markedly worse if it had been released on the Vita instead? "Because the Vita is selling so poorly" seems to be it, but that is overly simplistic thinking. The Vita is largely fucked because it lost the PSP's biggest franchise, but the PSP's biggest franchise wouldn't have been fucked if it had actually shown up on the Vita.

A combination of multiple reasons. In this case, I think that user base is very relevant. If the Vita had sold something like 5 million in Japan already it wouldn't have been as much of a factor, but it's less than 2 million in Japan right now. MH being on the Vita would have helped it sell a bit more due to the fact that people know that MH will be releasing on it, but even if it had 3 million at this point it wouldn't be very sensible to predict that 2 million of those 3 million Vita owners would buy MH on the first week. The PSP was already quite strong in Japan when MH released the Vita isn't.

Sony should have made this a VITA title, god Eater 2 my ass, monster Hunter is the real system seller the Vita needed.

This is true, but Monster Hunter also wasn't MONSTER HUNTER!!!!!!! at that point. It was a moderately successful PS2 game that exploded when it moved to handhelds.

So while Monster Hunter circa 2005 couldn't have become the beast that it is today on a system like the Vita, I think a known quantity like Monster Hunter circa 2013 could sell Monster Hunter numbers on just about anything portable.

And what is the argument for that?

We endured months of "would have been better on Vita", "it will bomb on 3DS" and "it looks much worse than the PSP version", so get over it already.

*Opens VGChartz*

*sees thread*

Ugh. Well that's a troll war waiting to happen. I'll hafta edit the title and OP so we can at least focus on the main point here: the actual game's sales and not hardware it doesn't even appear on. This forum... *shakes head*

*sees that BadGenome made it and it's not unequivocal troll bait*

Oh... well, color me surprised. Carry on!

You may be right, but I feel like you're overestimating the power of MH. 

I agree.  But there are gamers that buy a system for THE GAME with other lesser games to back up the purchase.  Vita has lots of good games but it still doesn't have that heavy hitter.