Monster Hunter Stories Takes Number One Spot in Japan, But Falls Well Short of Main Series Sales

Maybe folk are just Monster Hunter'd out?

It's right near where a typical jrpg on the 3ds will land. If it's any good then it will grow to over 200k and that's about the norm for a good jrpg.

MHS has always looked like a kid friendly spin-off to me, the kind of game that would continue to sell as time went on and kids found out about it, but it never seemed meant for MH fans to me.

Anybody offhand know the 2DS and New 3rd prices in Japan? Seeing 2DS triple 3DS sales surprises me, unless it's just pent up demand and Pokémon special editions?

I hope MHS sells well enough for it to be localized!

The PS3 casts a long shadow, huh? Makes me realize there's no rush in getting a PS4.

@alasdair91 In Japan? Definitely not.

That is a low number for Japan. Please bring it to the U.S. regardless. I want this game! It looks amazing to me.

I'd say Capcom aren't too happy with those numbers. And I bet Nintendo were expecting a boost in hardware sales for 3DS.

Splatoon returns to the top 20 at no20

Disappointing numbers unless this Is like Yokai Watch(the first one) and it just sells like 20K+ a week for like a year.

Eh. The gameplay looked very shallow from what I saw, and the "story" part of "Stories" doesn't seem to be anything special.
Not surprised at the rather ho-hum sales.

It's taking a blockbuster franchise that has all-ages appeal and making a kiddie spinoff- imagine a chibi-style E10+ CoD with SRPG gameplay, and you have a rough equivalent of the departure Stories is from the main series.

And then there is Splatoon which is still barely hanging on somehow.

I'm more excited for blazblue personally! Although I might pick this monster hunter up. I know there is a entry of this series that I'll like... I have faith.

There goes any hope of it coming west.

Those Wii U sales numbers. :/

@CrazedCavalier The main series most certainly does not have ''all-ages appeal'', despite the recent entries's attempts to lower the barrier of entry. Games are rated T, and are not forgiving of messing around, especially early in.

Stories is like Pokemon, in that on the surface it seems simple and easy, but dig deeper and a whole bunch of depth and meta turns up. You have monsters that learn particular skills, have different A.I behaviours, meter you need to manage to control said A.I, element matchups, combos for riders as a risk-reward mechanic, items, mixing and matching monsters to tweak the skills you want etc. It certainly helps that the game has multiplayer (not sure about online, though).

The main reason I'd see a game like this flop is, well, stiff competition from Pokemon and possibly Yo-Kai Watch.

@Equinox Based on what I've heard from gaijinhunter, I'd guess that the difficulty progresses somewhat akin to Pokemon, main campaign isn't too difficult at least until the end, with the main challenge coming from post-game content (High-Rank quests in this case, yes there are quests like the regular games) and player-versus-player combat.

Considering how dire the preorders were, this is actually a bit more than I was expecting. Still not great numbers though. Only word to sum the sales up is "spinoff".

I still think it'll come west though.

I want this game in the west. I'd get it day 1.
I put over 400 hours in Monster Hunter 4U and over 200 hours in Monster Hunter Generations so far and I'm not tired of the series.

I did stop playing but that's because I mostly did all I wanted to do already. I still try out the new DLC when they come out.

@cyrus_zuo Dragonball Fusions did about the same numbers and we're still getting it localized. NEVER give up hope!

@meleebrawler I should've clarified: in Japan, it's a massive phenomena.
Capcom has "tournaments" where people compete in duos to get an arena quest done the fastest.
The most recent was around Generation's original Japanese release, and the winners? A mother and son duo.
The series is massive and is firmly implanted in Japanese pop culture. Stories effectively cuts out the millions of main series fans just to stoop for a younger demographic that, as you said, has their hands full with other things.

I saw Gajin's video on the Dual Jho battle, it does seem quite challenging. I don't know where people are getting this "MH for babies" thing from.

Ganbare, New 3DS XL !
KICK that PS4 out !

With numbers like that, we'll never see Monster Hunter Stories westbound. ;(

It's the first MonHun game that actually looks really cool. The graphics don't look like crap like normal MonHun games seem to look (MH4 and MHGen)

Hopefully it will come to west as well. I saw the first amiibos for the game in shops already in Japan.

@CrazedCavalier How old was that son? And would he really have gotten into it the way he did without support from his mother?

The whole point of spin-offs is finding new audiences for a given series without severely altering the main entries. That audience may be near-nonexistent in Japan (Capcom probably intends the game to sell there at least based on brand power alone), but there are certainly more than a few people around here expressing interest for this game while they haven't for any other main entry.

Assuming Capcom doesn't like those numbers (which, knowing them, is a logical assumption), it probably doesn't bode well for MH Stories coming westward. They might decide to localize it but I'm not holding my breath. Capcom's pretty shifty anyway and while I think these are decent numbers for an RPG spinoff, Capcom may have been expecting numbers closer to the main series - which is ridiculous but companies and investors ultimately care about the bottom line and nothing else. Here's to hoping, anyway (and for a physical release ::clears throat:: Ace Attorney).

MHS sold...okay. Nothing impressive by any means, but given the terrible preorders this game had, its launch sales are decent. Legs will determine whether MHS spawns a spin-off franchise and/or gets localized.

Capcom never forecasted MHS to sell more than a million copies, so I don't know why anyone would believe Capcom wanted the game to sell as much as a mainline MH game (3 - 4 million)...