Japanese Charts: Monster Hunter Stories 2 Goes Top, But Debut Sales Fall Well Short Of Rise

The Switch Lite selling more than both models of PS5

Great performance of MHS2 otherwise

Way to go, Ring Fit!

That’s a shame about stories…..maybe if they lock the frame rate and issue a collectors edition in the UK i might pick one up.
Tho it’s not gonna help the Japanese sales numbers

Idk why I even care about console sales, I'm not getting anything out of it.

Although it is fun to argue online, so, Switch is best. Suck it, haters.

Weird that japan loves JRPGs and loves monster hunter but isn't that fussed about a monster hunter JRPG.

It seemed kinda like Dragon Quest to me, from the little I've played so far.

Ha Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is back on the chart thanks to the addition of Kazuya Mishima. With Skyward Sword HD coming next week, Monster Hunter Stories 2 won't be at the top for long. Also RIP PS4, that seven hundred units sold is just sad.

Stories 2 deserves more sales. Of course it's going to sell worse than Rise, that's obvious, but I hope it does better. Time will tell, but I'd like it to become a franchise on their own, like Persona. It has so much potential.

Stories 2 will have legs. It's just that type of game.

About what I was expecting for MHS2 based on thr first games sales. Not sure why this series isn't more popular in japan. Monster hunter? Check. Jrpg? Check. Monster collecting game? Check. What isn't to like?

I don’t get why Stories 2 is constantly being compared to rise🤦‍♂️That was always goanna be the bigger game. Stories 2 has actually done well a hell of a lot better then the first one so don’t get the negativity about it. Capcom will be happy that’s the main thing.

Stories 2 fell under the same fate as any Zelda game that isn't BotW or its sequel. People need to expand their horizons and be willing to try other games in the same franchise.

Rise and Stories are the same monster type but very different age appeal levels. So they only compare to monsters and not much else.

Wasn't expecting MH Stories 2 to do better than a mainline MH game but still, I'm glad that it sold well. Capcom sure is on a roll this year. So glad I picked it up day one. I've been playing non-stop ever since

The switch dominating Japan again. No big surprise here. It has no competition. The switch will continue to dominate as more great titles are going to continue to be released for the rest of the year. Great job Nintendo.

I think Stories 2 is going to be one of those consistent longterm sellers, or at least I hope so. It's been such a big surprise for me so far.

@Lord How exactly is it a shame for MHS2 lol? Those sales numbers are incredible for a Spin-off. I just don't get why this site compares the sale numbers of a main MH game like Rise with those of a spin-off like Stories 2. That's like comparing Pokemon SwSh to Mystery Dungeon DX

@mariomaster96 For the headline, ofcourse. It's a purely clickbait based title.

Also I love MHS2, I am much more into turn based RPGs than other MH games.

I would have bought it but I really much dislike how bad the game runs... this actually killed it for me

@Lord Honestly I don't know how "bad" the number truly are.

Ultimately it's still a jRPG spinoff of a better known title and while knowledge of the Monster Hunter franchise helps, jRPGs have always kind of sold less than fans seem to think they do as a genre. At least outside of Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest(and I'm not even getting into the juggernaut that is Pokemon).

So it was always a "risky" comparison.

On the flip side, generally devs do have a good idea of how much they sell/don't sell so they've generally planned development(and specifically, the cost of development) accordingly.

So as a result a lot of the (better planned) jRPG can turn up a profit with surprisingly low amount of sales when compared to other genres.

And while Stories 2 is indeed pretty, it's also done in a fashion where you can perhaps guess how development may have indeed been less costly than believed. Compared to even Rise, many of the monsters use not only much simpler textures but also a lot less triangles in their geometry compared to the smoother models used in re: even just Rise.

Plus being longer to play, jRPGs tend to also be slower burns when it comes to sales.

So I could be wrong, but I feel that even in Japan 130k sales at release is.... not bad.

Recall that this is a game that also not only happened to be out in the west(in many countries at that) but also happens to be out on PC as well where it's currently(at least, when looking at it from my account) to sit as the third best seller on there.

Plus it's also selling both physically and digitally on Switch, whereas the numbers we have here (I believe) are purely physical sales purely for Japan alone.

I don't expect it to reach the massive numbers of Rise.... but 1 million worldwide sales feel at least well within it's reach and I suspect it's budget might have been thought with that in mind(and thus likely "breaking even" well before then, such that if it reaches 1mil that would be the "expected profits" number proper).

But yeah, on average a RPG doing even just 500k-800k worldwide sales(total sales, not "release day" sales) is usually a solid performance.

The first Monster Hunter Stories on 3DS sold ~150,000 copies at launch.

The sequel should see a bigger launch when digital sales are included.

@the_beaver To be honest, do keep in mind those are purely Japan retail sales only, and only on Switch.

This doesn't include digital sales, worldwide sales or sales of the PC version(which is currently the no.3 top seller on Steam. Interestingly a similar performance than the Switch eshop being no.3/no.4 best seller with first-party titles like Mario Golf and Zelda Skyward Sword).

@westman98 Plus Japan still very much is in the grip of COVID, so it's not impossible it could be seeing more digital than physical sales,. Or at least close to as much digital than retail sales.

Plus, I just checked. The game in third place is Mario Golf but only sold 17k copies this week.
But if you look at Mario Golf(again, a first party title), you'll notices that Mario Golf only has a total of slightly more than 120k sales, despite launching much earlier.

So despite selling "only" 130k copies, Monster Hunter Stories 2 has already done better on it's launch week than a first party title like Mario Golf has done so far despite launching quite earlier.

@Tom-Smo Honestly, it's pretty good.

Plus if you look at the weekly/total sales of other games you can see that not only Stories 2 has done better this week than the first-party Mario Golf.... it's actually done better in it's launch week than Mario Golf is doing in term of total sales so far.

Plus if you look at the textures/models style and complexity used in Stories 2, it's quite possibly they already budgeted all along for this kind of sales.

It's easy to forget that most jRPGs are budgeted not with 1-2mil launch sales in sight, but with only 500k-800k lifetime sales in mind when they calculate development costs and expected profits.

for a fairly new spinoff i think you can only go so far against a juggernaut like mainline MH, but these sales are still very promising, has me hopeful for the future of Stories!

@Dezzy part of the reason is that the MHS series is aimed at kids in Japan. I live in Japan, so all I see is the Japanese marketing but I'm going to guess in the west they're acting like it's a normal RPG? Here it's a kid's RPG complete with kid's anime and merch.

Comparing MHS2 sales to Rise is like comparing New Pokemon Snap sales to Sword and Shield, pointless, irrelevant. It's a spin-off, compare it to the first games sales. Baffled by NintendoLifes forced negativity here.

I like Monster Hunter games but this game just did not appeal to me. The cheesy jrpg story stuff and monster rpg thing just wasn't swaying me. I has my doubts this was going yo attract folks like Rise did. Unfortunately for the series my feelings were confirmed. Should make it cheaper sooner tho for those who are interested in this.

Well, you have Monster Hunter which is still some what of a niche genre of play imo. Regardless of the sales but also this game just SCREAMS uwu way too much. I mean Monsties? MONSTIES!

Every week people mention the ps5 but the ps5 is a true home console whilst the switch is primarily a handheld console which the Japanese go crazy for. Home console gaming Japan is pretty much dead. If the switch was just a TV console the sales would be dire aswell.

Headline seems unnecessarily negative... Stories 2 is a spin-off and wasn't ever going to match the sales of a mainline entry. Regardless, 100k+ physical in one week is still great I'd imagine.

The figures are low when you think there are over twenty million Switch units sold to date in Japan.

I think it's the quality of the games that are to blame as well as the vast quantity of indi games released.

Lack of quality, to much quantity.

Also I bet that a vast amount of Switch Lites are sitting in draws and cupboard unused. Bought to play say, Animal Crossing, but that had been played enough and so the console isn't used that much anymore.

Are we gonna also judge how Mario Golf didn’t sell anywhere near as much as Mario Odyssey too?

@zool Many amazing games fall under the radar so quality isn't always relative to popularity. Thay being said, as some people have been indicating the article is a bit too negative as this is a spin-off that isn't expected to compete with the main franchise in terms of popularity, which is also one of the most popular gaming franchises in Japan. The game is actually doing fairly well and digital purchases haven't been considered.

Personally, after many hours of playing the game I really recommend it. It's easily my favourite game that I played this year and one of the best Switch games that I have in a collection of about 70 games.

@roy130390 I understand your point, but it is still a 10 year old game which has been given a makeover, had some of the annoying bits removed and released as a full priced game.

I have played and liked the original and at the time paid full price for it. This is Nintendo 'cash grabbing', relying on new gamers to think this is a new game, and to them it maybe.

We have dozens of Wii games that could get the same treatment. For that reason and reluctantly, I hope they don't sell well.

@zool MH Stories 2 isn't a remake, it's a sequel with a different story, new characters, new locations and several upgrades on gameplay and graphics. It also expands the places to explore, monsters available, armors and weapons. By that logic every game sequel is the same game unless it makes an entirely different thing, which rarely happens and when it does it's usually criticized as it feels like something not related to the original.

I can assure you that it's a proper sequel and not the same game because I also played the first one and it does what a proper sequel should: tell a new story while expanding the game features enough to offer a better experience.

The game isn't even a Nintendo exclusive, it's from Capcom and it's also available on PC so they have nothing to do with it.

I don't mean to be rude but you sound like you have no idea of what you are talking about. Out of all the cash grabs out there, you are choosing to hate on an actual passionate project with lots of care and work.

@roy130390 I think you have grabbed the wrong of the stick. And saying you don't mean to be rude and then being rude, is you being rude.

That said, this topic is titled 'debut sells fall well short of rise' and there was more than one game listed, and MH is currently number one. So my previous comments are reasonable.

My comments were general, to all games listed, although they would apply more to Mario Golf. I have never played a MH game, although I played some of MH stories 2 demo, but didn't feel it was for me.

If games are not selling well at launch in Japan,
compared to the amounts of Switches sold there is a reason for this and my post gives my thoughts.
Maybe you could explain or give a better reason why MH stories 2 launch sales are so low compared to MHRise?

@zool Being assertive, blunt or direct are sometimes perceived as rude despite there being considerable differences between not sugar coating a response and insulting someone. It also doesn't help that comments don't have a way of indicating the tone in which something is said. Still, I apologize for the misunderstanding and assure you that I'll avoid it in future replies.

There's more than one game listed and it was my mistake to assume you were talking about that one, however the the title and previous comments indicate the game that is the main focus of the article so I hope that you understand why the confusion happened.

And about why the sales are so low compared to the main entry there could be several reasons:

1. The spin offs are fairly new and are still discovering it's audience.

2. Sales are split with a PC audience.

3. Digital sales aren't counted and could have been preferred with this product.

4. There was some wrong information about needing to do a big download despite of getting a physical edition (Which could have influenced #3).

@roy130390 no apologies needed, I sometimes try to use the same tone I think is being used to me, and I do try to remember to add a 😀emoji.

My biggest gripe from that list is Mario Golf. A game I was looking forward to but it released at full price with a poor amount of content. On principal I would not buy it. Looking for something new to play I did play MH stories 2 demo but couldn't get into it, if I remember there is a lot of speech text which may have put me off. But then Amazon were offering a voucher and a discount on Mario Golf which took 40% off the price. So for me it paid not to rush to buy on release date.

The graphics on MH stories 2 look good, I might restart the demo and give it another go. I prefer gamer recommendation than reviewers.😃