In 2025, Monster Hunter fell prey to profit

Capcom couldn't have hoped for a better environment to release Monster Hunter Wilds into. Monster Hunter was already ascendant: World was a breakout success that thrust the series into global awareness, and after glutting itself on Elden Ring the gaming public had a mainstream interest in precise, demanding third person combat and systems-heavy buildcraft. At launch, that math held true. In three days, Monster Hunter Wilds had sold a triumphant 8 million copies—the fastest-selling launch in Capcom's history.

10 months later, the story of Monster Hunter Wilds has a very different tone. On Steam, its review rating hangs at a middling Mixed, having intermittently plunged to Mostly Negative when updates either neglect or worsen the game's profound performance issues. By July, its sales had collapsed—and after news broke that it had gone from 10 million launch sales to less than 500,000 in a quarter, Capcom's stock price plummeted alongside.

When I spoke to Wilds art director and executive director Kaname Fujioka in December 2024, he said Wilds was an attempt to ensure that the world can "truly become fans of the franchise." It was aimed at securing Monster Hunter's place as a premier, mainstream series that can stand shoulder to shoulder with Street Fighter and Resident Evil in Capcom's catalogue. Why instead has it been marred by technical faults, microtransaction cruft, and a faltering sense of series identity?

It's because, in 2025, Monster Hunter was Capcom's best choice to sate its hunger for infinite growth.

In its quarterly earnings calls and integrated yearly reports, Capcom regularly cites an ambitious goal: The publisher will—must—increase its operating profits by at least 10% each year and every year. Since 2015, Capcom has maintained that streak, and in its corporate messaging, it's presented as a self-evident truth. Fish will swim. Birds will fly. Capcom's operating profits will have grown by at least 10% by the end of the financial year.

It's what Capcom investors expect and what Capcom management delivers. And as the 2024 financial year progressed, it's a mark that Capcom was failing to meet.

Necessary losses

2023 had been a good year for Capcom: More than continuing its years of consecutive profit growth, the celebrated launch of Street Fighter 6 helped the company break its record for game copies sold in a single year by a healthy margin. But as Capcom progressed into FY2024, that sales momentum faltered thanks to a release calendar that was comparatively thin.

Dragon's Dogma 2, closing out FY2023 with a March 2024 launch, wasn't a massive market success, and while July 2024's Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess landed well with critics, it only launched with perfunctory fanfare—Capcom's own investors would eventually ask in a July 2025 earnings call why Kunitsu-Gami "did not appear to receive strong promotional support to drive sales."

That promotional support had likely been set aside for a bigger bet that Capcom couldn't afford to lose. By October 2024, its net sales were down 24.7% year-over-year. Compared to the year before, profits had fallen by almost 40%. But in January 2025, Capcom told investors those losses were expected, and its earnings forecast of continued revenue and profit growth was still on track: Any decrease from 2023 would be more than rectified when Wilds closed out the financial year with its megaton launch.

We can only guess whether there was concern at Capcom before launch over just how profound Wilds' PC performance issues were. Or how its wider, more open regions and seasonal cycle made for more hollow hunts. Or whether its sanded edges and streamlined difficulty would trap the game in an arbitrary escalation of difficulty.

If there was, it wouldn't have mattered. If Wilds didn't launch at its appointed time, it would mean breaking Capcom's decade-spanning streak of consecutive growth with a damning double-digit deficit. A delay was unthinkable. Wilds would rescue the company's fortunes because Wilds was the only thing that could. Capcom had left itself with nothing else. The line must, as always, go up.

As I wrote in our review back in February, Wilds is the best that the dance of Monster Hunter combat has ever felt. But across the year that's followed, it's become clear that it's not the game it deserved to be. Only now, after 10 months, has Capcom been able to muster its first real improvements for Wilds' dire optimization flaws. We'll be waiting until February, however, for some fundamental performance considerations, like proper LOD transitioning.

Meanwhile, Capcom never slowed its effort to squeeze a little extra revenue from those millions of launch customers. Wilds' microtransaction catalogue now lists 190 items, totaling almost $500 of potential cosmetic purchases—and I'm not even counting the $75 soundtrack.

I'm an avowed Monster Hunter sicko. It brings me no joy to see a series I've had such an affinity for shuffled out the door as a half-baked revenue injection so Capcom's investors didn't have to see their favorite numbers go down. But if I'm being honest, it isn't Wilds itself that leaves a pit in my stomach. It's knowing that, as Monster Hunter became more celebrated around the world, it was only a matter of time.