Monster Hunter Stories and Monster Hunter XX.

While it's a spinoff game, Stories didn't do as well in Japan as Capcom would have liked.  I think, even though Worlds would be a Switch title if anything, Capcom doesn't want the big boys stepping on the toes of Stories in the west.  MH isn't a kid friendly franchise, and I think they'd like to push the spin off that welcomes young players as hard as possible to get them into the mainline games.

This is the same logic for XX.  No reason to compete with yourself in your largest market.  

I realize Worlds doesn't release until next year, but I'm thinking Capcom doesn't want the west skipping Stories and Japan ignoring XX and just waiting on Worlds.

Have you seen the game? I doubt the Switch could handle it without serious compromises to be honest.

uh huh. You might be on to something.

Giving my opinion?  Glad you think the way you do.

This theory doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If it was a sales concern Capcom would be more concerned about the bold new MH title that cost a lot of money.

And with so much of the MH market being Japanese handheld players, porting World to Switch would allow for a safety net.

The real reason is that MG Worlds targets 30fps on superior technology to the Switch, and that's IN dock mode. It would take a lot of R&D to get it up and running.

I have seen the game.  The only remarkable technical aspects are some of the lighting and particles.  It's using the same old engine, just prettied up.  The Switch could run Worlds, with far fewer compromises than you seem to think.

And just to elaborate: grass density is mediocre, environment textures are nothing special, polygonal complexity of various environmental and character meshes are nice but nothing to write home about, particle effects are nice the few times they use it, and the lighting is quite good.  It's a pretty game, no doubt, but no tech showpiece, not even remotely close.

the game looks very dated. Amazing for a MH game, still very dated.

There are no areas anymore which means no load screens and i'm pretty sure the Switch can't pull that off which by gameplay we've seen is fundamental to the gameplay. You can't work around that.

I don't know if he did, but I did. It looks good, but nothing Switch can't handle at 720p30fps. Btw, there are many other reasons why it's not on Switch, and power is not one of them. I just think OP is wrong btw.

I've worked with open worlds, in three different engines and followed projects working with other engines.  The size of the world is fairly inconsequential, it's about how you manage the on-the-fly loading.  You don't load the whole map all at once in full detail.  For example, in Skyrim it loads only a specific number of cells around the player and only renders certain components when they fall in your cone of vision.  Same with Xenoblade Chronicles X, whichis far larger than Skyrim with significantly fewer loading screens.  

Again, nothing overly special.  And on top of that, the map is still structured in zones with connecting paths according to Capcom, they just don't have loading screens.  Choke points like that make managing this even easier.