Today marks the worldwide release of Monster Hunter Rise: Spirits Unleashed, and just hours after its launch, Capcom’s title is already breaking records. On Steam Charts, the game’s popularity can be gauged in real-time, with over 1.3 million players simultaneously enjoying it on PC as these lines are written. This sets a historical record for the franchise, far surpassing the numbers of Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise, which had recorded 334,000 and 231,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch, respectively. This indicates that the phenomenon is now global, and given that Monster Hunter World sold over 28 million copies in 2018, a similar commercial performance seems likely. However, it will take a few days to assess the game’s full commercial impact, including figures from PS5 and Xbox Series platforms.
If Monster Hunter is now an unstoppable event in the West, in Japan, Capcom’s title has long reached a religious threshold, and it is not uncommon to hear that companies grant their employees days off to play Monster Hunter at each release. This time, it is Pocket Pair studio, developers of Palworld, who decided to make Friday, February 28, 2025, a day off specifically to enjoy Monster Hunter Rise peacefully. We now dream of such initiatives in France…
