Monster Hunter World is the Biggest Game Launch on Steam in 2018

Yesterday’s PC release for Monster Hunter World is a record-breaking success. Only one day after release, Monster Hunter World broke the record for most concurrent players for a new game launch in 2018, on Steam.

The excitement for Monster Hunter World among the PC player base was palpable ever since the game was announced last year, with PC confirmed as a targeted platform. This was a shocking surprise since no mainline Monster Hunter game has released for the PC ever.

It wasn’t smooth-sailing however with players on the PC having to wait a long seven months to get their hands on the action-adventure game. In the meantime, gamers on PS4 and Xbox One have been enjoying Monster Hunter World since January.

But with only the console version alone, Monster Hunter World became the biggest selling game from Capcom. Great reviews lauding the foray of the franchise onto more powerful home consoles, just as ours, left prospect PC players even more excited.

Today we see that the rather lengthy porting period seemed to have no negative effect on the PC version’s success, with Monster Hunter World breaking the player charts on Steam only one day after its release. A staggering 271,892 players are currently playing Monster Hunter World on PC, tendency rising.

This makes Monster Hunter World not only the single most successful and popular Japanese game launch in Steam history but also the biggest game launch on Steam in 2018 period. Dethroning Dark Souls 3 which managed to pull in ~130k players in 2016 and Kingdom Come Deliverance which got ~96k players on day one this year. A monumental success which likely cements Capcom to further support the PC platform in the future.

The risky experiment by Capcom to leave handheld systems behind for one of its biggest franchises paid off in spades and it’s hard to think future Monster Hunter games will not be targeted for home consoles and PC from now on.