Monster Hunter Double Cross: Embrace The Upgrade

Monster Hunter XX (Double Cross) was the inevitable upgrade to the well-received Monster Hunter Generations.

Looking at CAPCOM’s history with the series, there is always an upgraded “G” or “Ultimate” version that adds monsters and features to the base game. This has been true since the game’s inception, and with Monster Hunter Generations achieving 4 million + sales, there was no way CAPCOM was going to leave that money on the table. This begs the question, why is everyone up-in-arms about this announcement we were pretty sure would come?

NO NUMBER, NO PROBLEM

I think the fact that Generations is not a numbered entry into the series gave people the impression that we would only see the vanilla version of the game, meaning up to ‘high rank’. This line of thinking is not unreasonable given that this is the first base version Monster Hunter game the west has received since Monster Hunter Freedom for the PSP. The fact that the audience from the PSP days was much smaller (even I came on board only when the series switched systems)

SUPPOSED END OF HARDWARE LIFESPAN

The 3DS has been around for about 7 years at this point and, despite a slow start because of the initial pricing, it is the best selling console of the past several years. Seven years is a long time for any console and by all accounts, the system should be dead, or dying. Then comes the announcement of Monster Hunter XX; a life-extender if I’ve ever seen one. The majority of people expected the next Monster Hunter to appear on a Nintendo console, probably the Switch, but as the 3DS has a proven 50 million plus units so this move makes more sense as CAPCOM typically sells about 2.5 million of the “G” version.

Final Word: I do believe that CAPCOM will announce a Switch version of MHXX sometime after the 3DS game launches in Japan on March 17, 2017; sales of the Switch hardware will be a factor in this. It might be a situation similar to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, which had both 3DS and Wii U versions where you could transfer your save file. I’d like Nintendo to take it a step further with their upgraded account system and provide the option of accessing save files from the cloud for (potentially) both versions.

Pray for a localization announcement, and embrace the upgrade.