IT HAS FINALLY BEEN CONFIRMED! Months after being leaked in that massive Capcom data breach, we finally have official confirmation that Monster Hunter Rise is indeed coming to PC. It is slated for early 2022 and is headed to Steam – it’s even already listed on the official Monster Hunter Rise website.
Now, I have a bit of short history covering this game, as I first talked about that massive Capcom leak back in November. Originally, Rise was intended to release in October, but as many noted, the leak was based on documents that were a year old, so COVID probably messed things up a bit and they had to push back the PC release some months.
It was a month later in December that we got more details on the PC release, including technical specifics and the terms of the exclusivity deal with Nintendo. Nintendo reportedly paid Capcom between $15 and $22 million USD to keep Rise exclusive to the Switch for a limited time. What surprised me though is that it was expected for the PC release to be kept a secret until AFTER Rise launched on Switch, so that Nintendo could get their money’s worth before the PC release is surprise-dropped later on. It’s an anti-consumer practice for sure, but with the PC version now officially confirmed, fans don’t have to worry about any surprise drops, they can just wait for the PC version instead of picking it up on Switch.
As for the technical details, the leak revealed that Rise’s PC port will have 30, 60, and unlimited fps options, will be able to run at whatever resolution your screen is at (including 4K), and that the controls will feature full key binding and customization. They even specifically mentioned that the mouse will use direct input instead of analog stick emulation – a definite plus for a PC port. There’s also going to be texture filtering, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, shadow quality, Vsync, and ultrawide options on top of that.
I stepped on a bit of a landmine when I uploaded my video discussing this back in December. I basically took the full brunt of the Monster Hunter community and got absolutely slammed with dislikes and negative comments – mostly from fans that really did not want the game to come to PC. It honestly kinda blew my mind that people would NOT want a game from their favorite series to be released on other platforms – I had thought that that would be a good thing.
It wasn’t just that video either, some of the more dedicated fans took it to go to my other (completely unrelated) videos and leave very mean comments. It got so bad that I even had to remove comments once they started busting out the racial slurs. Definitely not a good impression to leave for those that want to get into Monster Hunter games.
I was further disappointed to see that some PC fans responded to these comments with the same kind of toxicity – I mean, come on guys, why are we picking fights here? Let’s all just be happy that the game is now coming to both platforms and can be enjoyed by a wider audience – we don’t need any of that toxicity.
Now as for why the game is coming to PC in the first place, I think the answer is twofold. On one hand, you have the fact that Monster Hunter: World sold better on PC than console outside of Japan, but I’m actually surprised nobody on my previous video mentioned what I believe to be the bigger factor: China. Monster Hunter: World sold really well in China and given that only 4 million of nearly 80 million Switch consoles in the world are in China – yeah, it would be kinda dumb for Capcom to not accommodate for the Chinese market. I mean, China has been the largest video game market in the world for years now, even taking the #1 spot on Steam, so there’s definitely money to be made there.
Whatever the case, I’m just glad it’s coming to PC. I personally was just going to give the Switch version a pass due to the 30 fps (at least, until it was deeply discounted), but now that is no longer an issue, so I’m looking forward to giving it a play next year. Still, it would be nice to see cross-save, especially for those that want to play it on both platforms.
What’s also exciting is that the leak also mentioned Monster Hunter Stories 2 coming to PC and now that Rise has been confirmed, I imagine it won’t be long until we see that confirmation for Stories 2. The leak mentioned it would have a dual release on Switch and PC in June 2021, but we’ll have to wait and see if that schedule is upheld – it will likely be delayed a bit due to COVID.
Anwyays, that’s it for me today. Thanks for reading and see you guys in the next one.
cublikefoot 