Monster Hunter Tri hits a million!

[Toddifer]

Majin-Tenshinhan said:

Toddifer said:
This is a newbie question, but if Nintendo is publishing MHTri in the rest of the world, how much does Capcom get for having created the game? Obviously a smaller slice, but any idea what that roughly would be? Why would they have Nintendo publish it elsewhere? Is it because they want Nintendo to give it a marketing push they would not/could not afford to do? Can anyone explain this to me?

I don't think it has with affordability to do as much as Nintendo's pure skill in marketing. It's easy to point to their own franchises (Pokémon, Mario) and see how well-advertised they were with numbers to back it up.

But for a more recent example, take a look at the Professor Layton-series. Sold well in Japan to be sure, but once Level-5 gave Nintendo the rights to market it outside of Japan it became a massive phenomenon. Everyone realizes just how incredibly well Nintendo can market things. Of course, Capcom and Square, seeing this, leaped at the opportunity to get their Japan-centric franchises advertised by Nintendo. Monster Hunter has been around for about 5 years and sold horribly outside of Japan, and Dragon Quest has been around for over 20 years (!) and while it's always been a gigantic success in Japan, it's never posted impressive numbers anywhere else. But with Nintendo's help, it just might. It's not about the money, it's about the talent.

They simply see that, even if they get a smaller slice of the profits now, there will likely be so much more profit to get a slice off that it will give them a lot more money than advertising it themselves would.

Thanks for that perspective and example. I thought that Level-5 was owned by Nintendo outright. I did not realize that they did exactly what Capcom is going to be doing. Makes more sense now.