The latest entry in Capcom‘s acclaimed Monster Hunter franchise, Monster Hunter 4, is coming exclusively to 3DS. The series’ roots, however, are on Sony consoles. Its first two games launched on PS2, and it reached critical success with its multiple PSP entries. It was not until 2009’s Monster Hunter 3, which was originally announced as a PlayStation 3 title, that the series moved from being platform-exclusive.
“The series did start out on Sony platforms, but it’s just realistic to think that it can’t continue on one platform forever,” producer Ryozo Tsujimoto told IGN at the Tokyo Game Show. “With Monster Hunter 4, it actually just came down to timing – we were developing a new Monster Hunter and the 3DS hardware had just come out, so we figured it was probably the best platform for us to develop it on. You have two screens, with action on top and menus on the bottom, and there’s the 3D view as well. It just made sense to put it onto 3DS.”
Asked it Monster Hunter 4 would see release on other platforms, he added, “Other than what we’ve already announced, we don’t have anything that we’re planning.
“The way that we work with Monster Hunter games is that we see them as single entities, so we don’t develop for one platform and then think about porting it to another platform. The situation with the 3DS and the Wii U is that we wanted people to play this game a lot, so that’s why we have taken this [multi-platform] approach with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. But it doesn’t mean we’ll do that with new entries.”
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate will launch for Wii U and 3DS in North America and Europe this coming March. It will launch in Japan (for Wii U, the 3DS version is already out) on December 8. Monster Hunter 4 will launch in Japan in March.