Wyrdness said:
Home and portable fanbases are very different as the one major difference which defines why the portable games have always sold more in Japan is the portable ability to allow lan style gathering parties. This social element created a sub culture similar to the likes of Pokemon over there and is something consoles can't emulate even with online until the Switch it's like dungeons and dragons to the fans in Japan this is on top of the portable variant suiting the longer Japanese days out the house whether someone is working or going to college and such hence why a lot of portable MH fans in Japan are students who are the the main group who engage in the lan style gatherings. This is why no console version could match the portable versions sales in Japan World's director touched on this to investors before Rise was announced in that World was not being bought by a large part of MH's fanbase due to not really catering to to above mentioned elements he even mentioned the student demographic. |
Interesting, and it fits well with how handheld systems are just in general much bigger in Japan. It's certainly true that the handhelds entries have wider appeal than the home console ones and it makes sense that a hybrid game would have even wider appeal than that, I'm just still wondering by how much since Rise will be the first game to test that.
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