I've always had a doubt: why Capcom do not take Monster Hunter series to Nintendo DS? It has a huge userbase in Japan and the franchise is a total hit, it would be a great cash machine for Capcom. Now that Monster Hunter Tri is on the Wii, I don't know why they don't make a downgraded version of portable iterations.

What are your thoughts?

Perhaps the DS doesn't do 3D well enough?

Could be a possibility if they did some sort of spin-off... the main MH games however all rely heavily on fully realized 3-D environments, and I'm not really sure if that would suit it on the DS very well, unless they did some cel-shaded style visuals like Phantom Hourglass or GTA Chinatown Wars... both those games looked great on the DS, but your standard 3-D games usually end up looking like 1st gen N64 or PS1 games, and I don't think that would do MH justice.

Hmmm...

Cause that would be major downgrade. Currently with the exception of 3 I do believe they have all used practically the same engine. A DS specific entry would need a new engine. None of thier other games do 3D on the DS so it have to be from scratch.

Capcom are kings of re-using materials. Look at the sprite for Morrigan. It's how old now?

If they don't want to do it in-house, they could at least farm it out to SNK Playmore. I would definitely buy a game in which you have to rub a monster's cooter to make sure it is, in fact, a monster before you kill it.

Good 3D seems important for the franchise.

Monster Hunter DS

I once asked Christian Svensson about it, but I'm not sure you'd like to hear the answer...

It's probably in development for the DS successor.