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Monster Hunter Wilds dev says the series' true turning point wasn't Monster Hunter World, but a PSP game that came out 10 years earlier
Monster Hunter Freedom 2, released on PSP in 2008, marked a turning point for the series, allowing Capcom to easily implement online multiplayer and establish Monster Hunter as a game promoting communication, paving the way for its global success with Monster Hunter World and the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds.
Years before Monster Hunter World, producer Ryozo Tsujimoto says a PSP game was the series' true turning point.
Speaking to The Sankei Shimbun (translated via Google, DeepL), Tsujimoto notes that 2008's Monster Hunter Freedom 2 came "at a time when people were less likely to gather at friends' houses and play games together." Getting players to take advantage of Monster Hunter's online multiplayer with the PS2 had been a bit of a struggle, he notes, but the PSP allowed for far easier co-op.
With that hardware, Tusjimoto says that Capcom was "able to let people experience that fun," and the PSP's in-built connectivity went on to establish Monster Hunter's presence as "a game that encourages communication." Unfortunately, while Monster Hunter Freedom 2 was a particular success in Japan, where it sold the majority of its four million copies, it would take another decade for Monster Hunter to truly break into the global mainstream with the release of Monster Hunter World in 2018. World shifted more copies in its first three days - five million - than Freedom 2 managed in its entire lifetime and eventually settled at a huge 20 million sales.
That success is letting Capcom push even further with Monster Hunter Wilds, which is set to launch next year - although that did cause its own set of issues. Wilds has taken five years to make, partly because World was such a runaway success that Capcom had to spend time figuring out what new players actually wanted. And all that work was kickstarted by the humble PSP.