Capcom's Pursuit of Profit: The Decline of Monster Hunter Wilds

Capcom's recent release, Monster Hunter Wilds, initially soared to unprecedented success, boasting the fastest sales in the company's history with 8 million copies sold in just three days. However, this triumph quickly soured as technical glitches, pervasive microtransactions, and a diluted game identity led to a dramatic decline in sales and a slump in Capcom's stock value. This article explores how Capcom's unwavering commitment to annual profit growth, targeting a minimum of 10% increase, may have driven decisions that ultimately compromised the game's quality and alienated its player base, transforming a promising title into a cautionary tale of corporate ambition.

The initial reception of Monster Hunter Wilds was highly favorable, buoyed by the growing popularity of the franchise and a gaming public keenly interested in intricate combat and deep system mechanics, following the success of titles like Elden Ring. The environment seemed perfectly primed for Wilds to cement Monster Hunter's status as a mainstream powerhouse, alongside Capcom's other flagship series such as Street Fighter and Resident Evil. The game's art director, Kaname Fujioka, had even expressed hopes that Wilds would convert new players into devoted fans of the series. Yet, within months, the game's Steam reviews dipped to 'Mixed,' frequently plummeting to 'Mostly Negative' as updates failed to address, or even exacerbated, its significant performance issues. By July, sales had dwindled to less than 500,000 units in a quarter, causing a notable drop in Capcom’s stock price.

Capcom’s financial strategy has been transparent for years: achieve at least 10% operating profit growth annually since 2015. This ambitious target has become an ingrained expectation for investors and a primary directive for management. In 2023, the company saw record game sales, largely due to the success of Street Fighter 6. However, fiscal year 2024 presented a leaner release schedule, threatening to break this decade-long streak. Titles like Dragon's Dogma 2 and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess did not meet aggressive sales targets, with investors even questioning the latter's promotional support. This created immense pressure on Monster Hunter Wilds to perform exceptionally well and compensate for the previous shortfalls.

By October 2024, Capcom’s net sales were down by nearly 25% year-over-year, and profits had fallen by almost 40%. Despite these figures, Capcom assured investors in January 2025 that these losses were anticipated and that the company’s revenue and profit growth forecasts remained on track, largely banking on Wilds to deliver a massive financial boost by the end of the fiscal year. This reliance on Wilds suggests that a delay was deemed unthinkable, as it would have meant breaking the long-standing growth streak and facing a significant double-digit deficit. The game was thus launched on schedule, regardless of potential concerns about its PC performance issues, the impact of its more open regions and seasonal cycles on the hunting experience, or whether its simplified difficulty would lead to an arbitrary escalation of challenges.

Despite the critical acclaim for its combat mechanics, Monster Hunter Wilds ultimately fell short of its potential. Ten months post-release, Capcom has only recently begun to implement significant optimization improvements for the PC version, with fundamental performance considerations like proper Level of Detail (LOD) transitioning still pending until February. Concurrently, Capcom has continued to expand Wilds' microtransaction catalog, now listing 190 cosmetic items totaling nearly $500, not including a separate $75 soundtrack. For long-time fans of the series, this trajectory is disheartening, as it appears that the game’s core experience was sacrificed to meet corporate financial targets, transforming a beloved franchise into a tool for continuous revenue generation.