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Monster Hunter 4 has moved over 3 million copies in Japan, Capcom said yesterday. Additionally, Japanese sales tracker Media-Create add another tidbit of information on the game’s sales in their most recent report.
The majority of Monster Hunter 4 buyers, Media-Create say, is gradually shifting to a younger audience, according to retail stores.
This is important because it brings up the question of whether the game will be able to expand the Monster Hunter audience beyond that of 2010’s Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. It’s important to have younger players invested in your game because that’s where the majority of growth comes from for games such as these, which rely on word of mouth and large communities.
This leads to another interesting question.
Media-Create’s comments bring to mind a theory that we’ve been curious about, ever since Monster Hunter 4 was first announced—namely, will Monster Hunter 4 benefit from being on the same platform as games like Pokémon and Animal Crossing, which attract younger gamers? Nintendo’s portable platforms reach out to a much wider audience than the PSP ever did, so theoretically, Monster Hunter 4 has a much wider pool of gamers to draw from.
While Pokémon X and Y, both of which were released last week, will initially compete with Monster Hunter 4 for 3DS owners’ attention, it’s very possible that MH4 will be able to reach out to these players—many of which who will never have played a Monster Hunter game before—in the long run.
And who knows—maybe, in the long run, Pokémon X and Y could benefit from being on the same platform as Monster Hunter, which reaches older gamers, as well. After all, there are a lot of older Pokémon in the two games, which could attract older, lapsed Pokémon fans back to them.
