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What do you do with a monstrously successful franchise like Monster Hunter Portable? You improve it in sequels, of course, and MHP2 has done well for Capcom, selling a zillion copies. Its non-JP counterpart Monster Hunter Freedom 2 is headed to the rest of the world this fall. It also — as Monster Hunter fans have complained several times already — lacks online play just as Monster Hunter Freedom did. The real question is: why?

Until now I’ve chalked it up to them not wanting to deal with the costs of running the servers, or the costs of developing online play, but now I have another theory.

That theory is Monster Hunter Frontier.

Kotaku mentions that Frontier is a Monster Hunter MMO game that looks like it’s got a June release date in Japan and may be headed to South Korea after that. This basically tells us all we need to know. Capcom is keeping online play out of the Monster Hunter games so they can charge us for it in an MMO later, and only on a PC at that.

Would I pay a monthly fee to play a Monster Hunter MMO? Would any gamer pay a monthly fee for anything less polished and fun than World of Warcraft or Lord Of The Rings Online? I don’t think so. Call me skeptical, but until Capcom starts publishing it worldwide, and until it gets high marks, I won’t look twice at it.

But if they were to build a new PSP Monster Hunter Freedom title, make it work offline just as MHF2 does, and offer the option of for-pay but cheap persistent-world online play, I would pay attention. Letting me have a Monster Hunter Freedom that is truly liberated and able to be played anywhere — online and offline — could be worth a low price of admission. How low would it have to be? What do you think?

Via Kotaku.

See also:
Capcom Offers Weak Excuses for Ad-Hoc Only In Monster Hunter.
Capcom Lost The Online PSP How-To Docs
700,000 Reasons Why The PSP Isn’t A Failure
Gamespot’s anemic Monster Hunter Frontier page