Monster Hunter 4 had highest debut in the series

[SSJGohan3972]

"Up until now, 2010’s Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (released on the PSP) had the best debut in the series. Launched in December 2010, Portable 3rd sold 1.951 million copies in its first week. So, how did Monster Hunter 4 end up outselling it at launch?

The answer lies in download sales. Monster Hunter Portable 3rd had no download version available at launch, but Monster Hunter 4 did, which helped offset shortages at retail. Media Create say that retailers sold about 155,000 copies of Monster Hunter 4 in the form of download cards that can be used to avail the game from the Nintendo eShop, following their purchase.

Additionally, they estimate that approximately another 100,000 copies of the game were downloaded directly off the Nintendo eShop. That would bring total first-week sales of Monster Hunter 4 to around 1.97 million copies in its first week."

That's the most interesting part for me, I'd really love to see some official numbers for downloads (really for a lot of games, not just MH4) but in any case it looks like Monster Hunter changed systems and gens successfully in Japan. Capcom made a good decision here in my opinion, they probably sunk more into development and especially marketing for this Monster Hunter but that's an awesome opening.

And I'm sure we'll see something like Monster Hunter 4th Portable and/or Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate etc. rereleased both on 3DS and other systems in the future adding to Capcom's purse strings.