Monster Hunter Wilds opens to 1.3 million PC players

The newly launched Monster Hunter Wilds has already started off big, with over 1.3 million players on PC alone.

As Capcom’s beast-slaying game launched overnight, its concurrent player count gradually rose to hundreds of thousands. At time of writing, the current count is 1,307,976 players. So far, Capcom hasn’t disclosed how this translates to sales, which would also include its release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Wilds is now Capcom’s best-ever PC launch, a record previously held by Dragon Dogma II’s then-peak of over 200,000 players in 2024. It’s also considerably higher than the peaks for Monster Hunter World (334,684 players) and Monster Hunter Rise (231,360 players).

For Steam overall, it’s the sixth most-played game on the platform of all time ahead of Dota 2 (1.2 million players) and Cyberpunk 2077 (1 million players) and behind Lost Ark (1.32 million players) and Counter-Strike 2 (1.8 million players).

In the developer’s third-quarter fiscal report from January, Capcom placed its faith in Wilds’ performance as a counterbalance for its declining income and revenue that quarter.

The milestone is also notable since its Steam version first had an “Overwhelmingly Negative” response on the storefront, which has since changed to “Mixed.”

The rise of Monster HunterMonster Hunter has gradually grown into a flagship franchise for Capcom, which has been working to score more consistent hits beyond Resident Evil and Street Fighter. Ahead of Monster Hunter Wilds’ launch, sales for World grew until it hit over 25 million copies, the highest-grossing Capcom game to date.

Similarly, sales for its Iceborne expansion and Monster Hunter Rise have grown in the years since their respective launches. The franchise will further grow with Monster Hunter Outlanders, a mobile spinoff developed by Capcom and TiMi.

Ahead of Wilds’ launch, Game Developer spoke with Capcom about the game’s approach to open-world design and the company’s ongoing hot streak.

About the Author

Contributing Editor, GameDeveloper.com

A Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don’t ask him about how much gum he’s had, because the answer will be more than he’s willing to admit.