E' passato esattamente un anno, ovvero 365 giorni dal lancio dell'ultimo capitolo della saga di Monster Hunter in occidente. Parliamo ovviamente di Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, uscito lo scorso 13 febbraio 2015 in esclusiva per Nintendo 3DS e New Nintendo 3DS. Come saprete infatti, Monster Hunter X, ultimo capitolo effettivo della serie di Capcom è stato rilasciato in giappone già da qualche mese sempre in esclusiva su Nintendo 3DS. Questo però non ha portato Capcom a dimenticarsi totalmente di Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, ma sopratutto dei videogiocatori occidentali, americani ed europei che siano. Nelle ultime ore infatti il producer della serie, Ryozo Tsujimoto è stato intervistato da GamesBeat, ed in questa occasione ha svelato alcuni dei fattori che secondo lui, hanno portato Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate a diventare un vero successo di critica e vendita, anche in Nord America e in Europa e non solo sul suolo giapponese. Trovate le parole rilasciate di seguito alla news:
“… More than anything the addition of online play on the 3DS was huge. Obviously in Europe and North America it’s very difficult to play with others locally due to everyone being so spread out, so having online multiplayer in the game really showed the appeal of Monster Hunter’s multiplayer to a wide range of players.”
“Given that Japan is a small island country, there are more opportunities for people to meet directly, so the barrier for local play is low enough that lots of people can take advantage of it. This time around, especially outside of Japan we had a lot of people asking for online multiplayer, which of course was a big thing for players.”
“First, I think the demo we released was a big factor. We got feedback from our overseas branches, and we made it easier to find monsters compared to previous games, and in general made it easier to play for beginners. Second, we had a lot of cooperation from our overseas marketing leads and our localization leads, who feverishly came up with idea after idea just for this title, and that was a huge reason why this game was as successful as it was.”
“Finally, while we haven’t reached the numbers that we see in Japan, the fans who have stuck with us have helped us out a lot. They’ve created their own communities for the game and spread the word out for us. We really appreciate the hard work of those fans!”.
“Monster Hunter is considered an action game, so we’re fine-tuning those bits of the game until the very last minute. Because we’re tweaking the Japanese version until the very end, this affects how fast we can localize the game. Compared to other action games there’s also a lot of dialogue and text in Monster Hunter, so I’m very sorry to say this to our overseas users, but still it takes a lot of time to localize the games no matter how quickly we start the localization.”
via: Source - Source 2