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Forums - Microsoft - Microsoft and a Monster Hunter Exclusive.

Tbone on 22 June 2009

There used to be this story: we’re not sure if it is true. It theorised that Bill Gates earned so much money so quickly that if you piled it all up underneath him and sat him on top, then pushed him off, he would never hit the ground. The pile would be so high that should he fall, in the time it would take him to descend he would earn enough money to cushion the blow. And then when he fell off that new pile he would earn enough again to cushion the next blow. And so forth forever: because Bill Gates’ rich pasty arse will never, ever, come back down to Earth.

Of course the man’s legacy, Microsoft, is his principle supplier for all things mullah and the company has seen fit to spend its vaults of gold in buying lots of ‘friends’ in this generation of gaming. We’ll never truly know just how many deals the ‘Soft has peddled in the cord-filled backrooms of studios across the globe, but well publicised buys like RARE and GTA IV’s DLC (pocket money at US$50 million) would suggest that Sony brands like Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil probably didn’t make the multi-format jump for magic beans.
So why hasn’t Microsoft bought a Monster Hunter exclusive?

Monster Hunter is super popular in the one territory in which Microsoft is not: Japan. And we mean super duper gazuper popular. After building a base on the PS2 and then taking strongly to the PSP the last game in the series, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, took only six days to sell a million units. It’s already the biggest selling PSP game of all time with 3.3 million sales, despite not even being released outside of Japan yet. That’s more than Uncharted, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet and even Gran Turismo 5 Prologue worldwide on PS3.

To put that in contrast to the other big name Sony brands that have made the leap to Xbox 360. Resident Evil 5 has done 2.12 million on the console and Devil May Cry 4, 1.14 million. By comparison, securing a next-gen exclusive edition in the Monster Hunter series would seem like an excellent investment. It would deliver a much greater return on install base in their struggling territories than US$50 million worth of GTA content will, that’s for sure.

And obviously there is a line of communication there with Capcom off which they can build to the idea. Dead Rising and Lost Planet staked their claims on Xbox 360, and Devil May Cry 4 and Resident Evil 5 quickly followed suit in pledging to the console.

How much do you think its worth to Mircosoft, to have the most sales significant Japanese game of recent times on their machine? We would have thought a lot…

http://www.gameplayer.com.au/gp_documents/MicrosoftandMonsterHunter.aspx



 

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yo_john117 on 22 June 2009

I doubt it will happen....

What is Monster Hunter even about anyway??



megaman79 on 22 June 2009

I read that. Im sorry for the quality of australian game journalists, they have some bizarre ideas.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

Seece on 22 June 2009

Do people still believe Microsoft paid for those games to be multiplat lol, its not as if the devs would actually put the game on a system with higher sales for free now would it?



 

dbot on 22 June 2009

Is the Monster Hunter series popular on any platforms other than the PSP?



Thanks for the input, Jeff.

 

 

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alekth on 22 June 2009

It's still not clear how big MH really is when it comes to home consoles.
And in a way if there is a HD Monster Hunter and it's multiplat or there is a separate PS3 MH, a PS3 will be te definite choice in Japan since then you could have some nice PSP connectivity.



Lurker on 22 June 2009

lol, RE isn't a Sony brand. Every single game is on gamecube except RE5.



thekitchensink on 22 June 2009

Best-selling PSP game of all time? Liberty City Stories is at 5.7 million...

But yeah, Monster Hunter would be a nice grab for Microsoft, although I don't know how well that would fly over Xbox Live, since Capcom already charges people in Japan to play the game on PS2.



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Phrancheyez on 22 June 2009
seece said:
Do people still believe Microsoft paid for those games to be multiplat lol, its not as if the devs would actually put the game on a system with higher sales for free now would it?

What's that got to do with the story?  He didn't say MS paid for it.  It's referring to games that were once exclusive to Sony that now appear on 360 and the type of sales they do.

 



Squilliam on 22 June 2009

Capcom is looking to improve their sales in markets outside of Japan and the Xbox 360 is the obvious choice as the Japanese publishers first look to America as their next port of call for their games, and the Xbox 360 is strongest there between the PS3 and Xbox 360 at least as the Wii already has a MH3 release.



Tease.