News: Capcom calls Monster Hunter 3 on Wii U a Smash Hit Page 1

Capcom calls Monster Hunter 3 on Wii U a Smash Hit

In their annual fiscal report, Capcom today called Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the Wii U a "Smash Hit". This comes as something of a surprise as MH3U never lead any sales charts. Explanation? Capcom states that while digital sales were good, physical sales were low.

From their report:

"In the Digital Contents business, which constitutes our core competence... "Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) G HD Ver.", which was our first title for the new home video console "Wii U" that was launched in December 2012, also became a smash hit. However, its package sales were generally soft."

Note that "Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) G HD" is the Japanese name for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on 3DS and Wii U. Unfortunately, Capcom did not provide hard sales numbers. So we're left to speculate, "were there more digital sales than physical, and what constitutes a "smash hit"?"

What do you think, cubed3?

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Wii U)

Also known as

Monster Hunter 3G HD Ver.

Developer

Capcom

Publisher

Capcom

Genre

Adventure

Players

C3 Score

7/10

Reader Score

7/10 (8 Votes)

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Canyarion 09.05.2013#1

Either digital sales were very high, or they just made lots of profit because the game was so cheap to develop. They pretty much only had to add HD textures to the 3DS version.
Low costs + decent sales = huge profit.

crackedthesky 09.05.2013#2

Any chance "package sales" is referring to game and console bundles? I know it says "digital contents" but the rest of the paragraph doesn't seem like it's talking just digital sales either.

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Heywes (guest) 10.05.2013#3

Expectation for sales was low. Unlike with other launches expecting to sell millions, they hopefully estimated a realistic amount which was surpassed.
Seems more practical to me.

Either way, we get MH4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Excellent.

RX209 (guest) 10.05.2013#4

I smell bullshit.

~~Jindox 10.05.2013~~#5

RX209 (guest) said:
I smell bullshit.

I do also. Capcom love spinning this kind PR nonsense.

jres80 10.05.2013#6

Jindo said:
RX209 (guest) said:
I smell bullshit.
I do also. Capcom love spinning this kind PR nonsense.

The numbers are actually looking like 700k worldwide, most of the sales in Japan of course. That's quite good for a port that probably didn't have half the budget RE6 did. This information comes from their investor report, FYI. It's the same report in which they state that RE6 failed to meet sales projections. Hence "smash hit".

It's not a very difficult thing to believe. Zombi U did over 500k. Monster Hunter is a much bigger game than ZombiU. What's more interesting is that so many of the sales were digital. Unfortunately right now these numbers have to be inferred from some of their charts, in particular slide 6-3, "Summary of Major Financial Information".

~~Jindox 10.05.2013~~#7

jres80 said:
Jindo said:
RX209 (guest) said:
I smell bullshit.
I do also. Capcom love spinning this kind PR nonsense.
The numbers are actually looking like 700k worldwide, most of the sales in Japan of course. That's quite good for a port that probably didn't have half the budget RE6 did. This information comes from their investor report, FYI. It's the same report in which they state that RE6 failed to meet sales projections. Hence "smash hit".
It's not a very difficult thing to believe. Zombi U did over 500k. Monster Hunter is a much bigger game than ZombiU. What's more interesting is that so many of the sales were digital. Unfortunately right now these numbers have to be inferred from some of their charts, in particular slide 6-3, "Summary of Major Financial Information".

When you say "looking like 700k", what ballpark figures are you sighting from exactly?.

If it's sales are even remotely near that number, the vast bulk of those sales will have certainly been in Japan, where the 3DS is huge, and the incentive to own copies on both formats are far greater than anywhere else on this planet.

Capcom also reckon Tatsunoko Vs Capcom was a commercial success (wiki), without releasing any actual figures and saying no to the possibility of a sequel, haha.

Capcom are the very worst at this kind of thing, only the most gullible fall for it.

Zombi U was a launch game, much like Red Steel was... It's showing at E3 was always going to pull the fans in.

Canyarion 10.05.2013#8

Capcom are talking about the Wii U version, not the 3DS. I think we already know the 3DS version sold like crazy.

jres80 10.05.2013#9

As already stated, Jindo, slide 6-3, "Summary of Major Financial Information", from their fiscal report, as referenced in the article:
http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/explanation/2012/full/explanation_2012_full_03.pdf

In said slide Capcom breaks down sales by platform, including Wii U, which saw 700k units shipped. Considering Capcom's only release on Wii U thus far is Monster Hunter, that means Monster Hunter saw 700k sales to vendors, ipso facto. It could be argued that not all of those shipped units resulted in retail sales, however not all of them are physical either, considering the aforementioned statement that a large number of sales came from digital downloads. Also recall the shortages of the physical versoin in places like the UK.

The only room for misinterpretation here is if 700k is the physical units shipped, without digital sales. In which case the numbers would be even higher. I'm assuming 700k includes digital, though. It shouldn't be surprising that Monster Hunter did well, given how big Monster Hunter is in Japan.

And this isn't PR speak. It's legally binding financial disclosure.