Monster Hunter Wilds is still holding onto a vague 2025 release window, but a more specific Q1 2025 launch looks increasingly likely as Capcom rolls out a video package much like the one that preceded 2018 hit Monster Hunter World by approximately six months.
Earlier this morning, the official Monster Hunter YouTube channel uploaded three videos covering Monster Hunter Wilds: a beginner-friendly "basic mechanics overview" that touches on the new Seikret mount and slinger functionality, a showcase of the new "Focus Mode" targeting function, and a weapon demonstration for the iconic greatsword (below). We can expect demos for the other 13 weapons to be posted fairly soon.
The greatsword video raised an eyebrow for me because I remember Capcom posting something very similar for Monster Hunter World. It turns out it did, almost to the week: the Monster Hunter channel has a series of Monster Hunter World weapon overviews dated July 27, 2017 – six months shy of the game's initial January 26, 2018 console release date. More tantalizing still, the weapon trailers for Monster Hunter Rise arrived in December 2020, just three months before its March 26, 2021 debut on Switch. (Monster Hunter Wilds, in a first for the series, will launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X simultaneously with full crossplay.)
It's too early to draw definitive conclusions, but this timeline supports the hopeful theory that, when Capcom says Monster Hunter Wilds is coming next year, it means right at the start of next year – potentially sometime between January 1 and March 31, 2025 based on previous games.
Ever since our hands-off Monster Hunter Wilds preview in June, every bone in my body has been telling me that this game is relatively close to the finish line – not two months away, but not 12+ months away either. I've played all of the latest Monster Hunter games and I weathered all of their marketing campaigns, and it feels like Wilds has very much crested the hill.
Capcom likes to drop big games in the first quarter of the year, as it did with Monster Hunter World and Rise. In my conversations with the studio and the lead devs on Wilds, I've indirectly gotten the sense that they're mostly putting on the finishing touches. That's speculation based mostly on instinct, but now we've got real marketing milestones to point to as well.
Monster Hunter Wilds is, by all rights, trying to repeat and build on the unprecedented popularity of Monster Hunter World, which was a breakout moment for a once-niche series of action RPGs. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Capcom copy its own homework when it comes to marketing beats like these trailers, the inevitable beta test, and so on. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So if we're lucky, this is more than coincidence, and Wilds really is, at most, a half-year and change away.
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