Monster Hunter love in the US
March 24th, 2008 Chris "Kramez" Kramer
Joystiq recently sent us an email from one of their users, asking for Monster Hunter information in the US. I sent Joystiq a rather wordy response about the brand, which you can go read here. In a nutshell: Capcom believes in Monster Hunter in the US and we’re planning on getting behind the brand in a big way. Take heart, hunters! We’ve heard your voices on our forums (and on lots of other forums, like Game FAQs) . We think that with some serious outreach and marketing muscle that we can make this series almost as big here in North America as it is in Japan.
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Thank you so much! I’ve been waiting to hear for a US release of MHF2-G for a while…
Basically, me, my neighbors, my internet friends, and my long distance friends all play MH. All stemmed from when I got the original MH for PS2 and exclaimed it’s greatness. (I also worked for a game store back then and told others who have in turn turned into great fans.)
I’ve helped form local and online communities, and have made a couple new friends because of it.
Back to the topic tho… I do think the lack of a ‘main stream’ audience is because of a lack of advertising. The most I ever saw was a one page ad in a magazine here and there… which most people will ignore anyways. (Seriously! You gotta do more then that!)
I’d love to see some major game site intergraition, TV ads in popular time slots, banner ads on Penny Arcade… And true internet online play! We know that you want to keep it a social experience, but with voice chat widely being used these days it’s just as good as being at a local LAN. I know you’ll get a lot larger player base once you allow online play, and let us handle communication issues in our own ways. I can use push to talk or voice activation. =D Don’t force us to use X-Link Kai, because that limits the community, since most people don’t know about X-Link Kai, and thus, don’t get the game because they want true online play, but don’t know about X-Link Kai.
Aaaanyways, This is very exciting news! I’m happy to hear it! Love the game! New Weapons, Armor, and new Weapon types for MH3 pls! Let us use a Game Cube controller for MH3 pls! Have good net-code for MH3 pls!(unlike the laggy new Smash Bros *sad face*)
Please let us have MH Frontier in the USA PLEASE! My entire gaming crew have all vowed to buy into it if it ever happens since it’s such a better experience then any other normal MMO.
And…. I want MH Action figures! =D
I agree with HappyWulf on one major point.
Please allow using infrastructure for online hunting with the PSP versions of the MH franchise. I don’t have many friends who have a PSP, let alone any of the Monster Hunter games. So, I must hunt alone. As a gunner, some of those bigger beasts best me. I don’t have (nor have spent the time to figure out how to install) the kludge that is X-Link Kai, so I would want native infrastructure in the next PSP MH game I buy. It should have voice chat (see the voice chat settings available in Resistance Fall of Man for what I’ve found to be one of the best implementations) for online play, hopefully with Skype in the firmware you have access to OS-level voip codecs so you don’t have to reinvent wheels while coding. Also, hopefully there is enough processor power left after the game engine for voice encoding/decoding.
I would also like to see as part of your NA marketing strategy to offer the MH bundle (as seen at http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-9e-77-a-49-en-15-monster+hunter-70-2k7b-43-7o.html ) on this side of the Pacific. I’ve been holding off upgrading my PSP-1001 to a PSP-2000 model to see if it comes to the States. I thought about importing, but I worry that it wouldn’t take the US firmware updates, and if it bricked Sony wouldn’t honor the warranty because I imported.
I’m looking forward to some nifty swag as you beef up the NA marketing of the Monster Hunter franchise.