Xbox Is Reportedly Working On A 'Monster Hunter' Style Exclusive

I like Monster Hunter, bring it!

I’m puzzled why they always lean towards multiplayer games. Anyone have some insight there?

I wonder if they don’t want to be compared to Sony.

Not sure how feel about this. That "genre" seems saturated already. Plus Dauntless is free to play.

If true, this is a good sign as they are still partnering with third parties for games!

@FatalBubbles
Xbox's success has been around there focus with multiplayer. If you watch the XB story, networking was a huge decision and focus from the start. I think now that they have Bethesda that will give them a bunch of single player games.

I’m all for more MH goodness, can’t wait for Sunbreak on Switch! That said, it’s a very hard niche to copy and do well…. The biggest one that’s similar is God Eater, and that has failed to capture me so far…. Granted I’ve only spent 30-60 mins with it, and need to give it more time.

As an MH vet since MH on PSP, even Monster Hunter World failed to draw me in…. It looked amazing, but felt to “hand holdy”… Supposedly it’s much better now after Iceborne, but I’m near positive it won’t top MHGU so I haven’t bothered.

I hope they can make it streamlined. I love Japanese games, but I just can't condone Monster Hunter and all of its jank.

Nothing is topping monster hunter and even after that people have dauntless which is free.

Now if they can make it single player only with a decent story and full open world with different connecting biomes then I'm interested

Also never heard of Certain Affinity before so did a quick Google search and seems like this could be way out of their league (on their own), 90% of their involvement is just co development with a bigger studio and DLC packs.

I don't know if Microsoft own them (sure seems that way) and if they do then maybe they should hold out until the Activision deal is done and get the studio behind the diablo series to make a monster hunter style game but with the boss demons from the diablo series etc

@UltimateOtaku91 They're independent and they aren't newbies, founded in 2006 by Max Hoberman and a small number of other ex-Bungie employees and other industry veterans.

@Dm9982 I like Monster Hunter, especially in cooperative mode. I think that Monster Hunter Tri was my most played Wii game. I like World too, now more than at launch and runs like a dream on Series X (in frame rate mode is finally 60fps).

@Banjo- yeah I’ve been debating on getting it on Xbox now that I’ve got a Series X. It ran decent on PS4 Pro, BUT, the frame drops would kill my motion sickness, that was the secondary reason for dropping it after 45 mins. Third reason was coming off of 500-600 hours of MHG/MHGU. Lol

@FatalBubbles so this is a bit of a two point answer and some will provide some varing answers.
Multiplayer games spawn continued playtime more so then single player as much as Sony games sell 10 million copies which is one of the key metrics Microsoft is looking at is user engagement.
So when they see games like sea of thieves hittinhg 25 million and having (I think) 10 million unique users a month. And growing it's easier to get a bunch of large projects like this off the ground

The other is gamepass it's easier to get a friend to sign up to gamepass (if they are not) or stayed signed up if everyone in your friends circle is always planning a mp session of the next big gamepass title. (Why so many coop games hit gamepass)

Sure Xbox will throw us some starfields/avowed games which will grab a bunch of people but after 2 years will we see a new avowed updates like we just saw sot do today with their largest roadmap yet

@Dm9982 God Eater has about as many pros as it has cons. Playing through the first game's (3!) stories co-op felt like an eternity, and there's so much repetition when you aren't changing up weapon types and custom bullets. 2 is almost more of a slog (less QOL since it only got one expansion unlike 1), and 3 is the shortest but easiest pill to swallow due to better balancing, pacing, and overall QOL changes.

@Broosh that’s what I had heard. I never got into God Eater when I saw it while working a GameStop years ago, didn’t even know what it was like. When GE3 released on Switch, and my friend had told me it was basically like MH with Hunt/Build/Hunt progression, I snagged it. I dig the setting and such, but like with any MH or MH style game, the first hour or so of tutorials and mini creature hunting is just a slog. My “Gamer ADHD” won’t allow me to stop, chill and progress and instead says, “Yo, you got a billion games in your backlog, try another one…” 😂😂

Hell, I didn’t even get around to finishing Witcher 3 until last year, after owning it 3 different times - Ps, Xbox and Switch…. White Orchard 6+ tutorial is a slog and a half. Finally forced myself through that, and once the game opened up truly it was amazing….

So yeah, starts to games can be the difference on if I continue playing or immediately move on some times. I’ve been spoiled with amazing opening sequences like Mass Effect, or get straight to it with Breath of the Wild or Hades….Hand holding kills me.

For reference, born in 1982, grew up with NES/SNES/Genesis where tutorials and such were non existent lol. Yeah manuals existed, but I never really checked em till after the fact. Or just to look at the pretty art like Zelda and Mario manuals.

If it's at least half as good as MHW, bring it.

@Terrin @Rural-Bandit @FatalBubbles It's not a West/East thing or a popularity thing though people tend to think so. Phil at one point said it's not intentional at all that they've had mostly online games, and they don't even want that for game pass because it thrives on variety and if everyone is playing the big online games that consume so much play time all the time they're not trying all the other games (translation: developer buy in requires metrics showing all the games get played by a large population.)

He said that it really comes down to the fact that they let the devs make whatever they want to make and it's so happened that most of their devs have mostly wanted to make online games, so that's what they've had. He also said he wanted to get more single player on there (Bethesda et al are no doubt a big part of that, though buying cod won't help that image, lol)

So it's definitely not that ms is actively trying to load up on online games, and at the top they actually want to back away from so much online. It's just that for whatever reasons devs currently seem to prefer making them, probably for the popularity and community engagement, the "audience" any artist seeks. Either that or the higher likelihood of long term job security.....

Yeah online games are the most played, but it's only a few of them that are so played and the others languish. It's a lopsided market where the sports games, cod, Halo, Fortnite, overwatch, gtao, wow, and things like StarCraft and dota take up the lions share of online play.

And as I wrote that list I realized Microsoft owns almost all of them now....... 😲

But who wants to compete against those in game pass?

I'm sure will be MMORPG

I like monster hunter type games, I played 1 on vita called soul Sacrifice I think, was pretty fun. I played dauntless which I liked the first 3 months I played it. I played a bit of monster hunter world, but I couldn't get into it. I wanna give monster hunter rise a go and see if it's something I'll be into. It looks cool from the trailers. So yeah, I'd be interested in trying out a new game similar to monster hunter

Maybe they decided to revive Scalebound...

For me, Monster Hunter World was one of my favourite games of last gen. It wasn’t so much the battles against monsters (which were good) but I just love the world and aesthetics of it all.

An ancient and unknown world. Big ass weapons and cool looking armour. Little cute cats. The fact my character got a full cooked meal before each hunt. Etc.

@Dm9982 I understand. I prefer a smooth 30fps with stable frame pacing than a 40-50fps mess 😅. It's also the main reason why I didn't play World much on Xbox One X but I'm totally amazed by World on Series X at 60fps (in frame rate mode). You can always get the Iceborne Master Edition, the regular price has been cut and the digital sales usually include it at a lower price.

@Clankylad You can capture them, it's actually more difficult! Yes, there are some missions that ask you to kill them but think of them as an overpopulation of dinosaurs that are going to get you all killed! 😁

@Dm9982 That's completely understandable. God Eater requires mounds of patience to get invested in, and even then you'll still get burned out faster than any Monster Hunter.
So from that, I still haven't progressed through half of 2 yet to see 3, and my backlog continues to grow as well (including Witcher 3 lol). And I'm on board with the tutorials thing too, the best ones don't interrupt the gameplay or force monotony onto you, but are offered as optional windows or flow naturally at the start of the game (the first Dark Souls comes to mind there).

@Broosh One of the things I like about Monster Hunter is that you can play thrilling 4-player battles but also go alone just to explore the environment and relaxing and that makes collecting items less boring than in other games.

@NEStalgia first party I agree they let studios currently make what games they want.

But for 3rd party Jeff Grubb and jez both confirmed Xbox is out shopping coop/multiplayer focues games for gamepass. Apparently for this Xbox specfically was wanting a monster hunter coop focused style game. So they do want more of this style game.
So it is either Xbox sees internal studios what they are making and plugging those holes with 3rd party or the Xbox publishing arm is very specfically just focusing on coop games

@Terrin I think it might depend if they're seeking to have particular niches of titles available on Game Pass, or if they're seeking to stack Game Pass with primarily those types of titles though.

I'm not really sure why they'd be seeking to replicate MH though, that seems like a strange thing to try to seek an alternative for considering it's a pretty specific genre and there's really only one big player in it. I'm assuming it has a lot to do with their desire to grow in Japan though since MH launch is basically a national holiday there, and Sony money-hatted MHW in Japan as exclusive last time which we can assume will happen again.

I definitely find it hard to believe, based on Phil's comments that they'd be actively trying to stack GP with competing online games, but I find it easy to believe they're trying to make sure each niche/subgenre is represented one. MH seems out of left field until you think of the Japan angle, though. I'm not convinced it'll be a successful push. Even Sony couldn't push it with Soul Sacrifice on a handheld, despite how good it was.

If GP changed to be mostly about multiplayer games, I'd probably end up dropping GP, TBH. But I'm not too worried that's happening at all.

@NEStalgia yeah I can agree. As It .maybe they see what 1st party is doing in filling the gaps but if what we know and rumors are true it does look like 3rd party publishing is going hard in coop/mp route
Never thought of the jp market as hear more and more stories of people picking up gamepass and a series s there

@Banjo- Absolutely. MH is the king of the genre by far, and deservedly so for that reason. Each entry has charming little details to enjoy when you aren't actively slaying.

@Broosh Right. Capcom is one of my favourite developers. It has always been.

@Terrin @NEStalgia I think that Microsoft are investing in both kind of games, single-player games and multiplayer games. Phil Spencer admitted that they need more single-player games and even if they have a multiplayer mode, the single-player portion is more important than ever before. For instance, they delayed Halo Infinite and hired ex-Bungie employees just to fix the story, Perfect Dark is rumoured to have a single and multiplayer mode, Fable is going to be an epic adventure... Then you have the Zenimax acquisition with most studios focusing on single-player aspects of gaming. My conclusion is that they want to cater to both kind of gamers even if some games are more profitable than others. Halo Infinite Multiplayer with over 20m players is kind of a Fortnite gold mine. This is what NEStalgia usually says about Game Pass, smaller, single-player games are also appealing and make sense for the company. If it was all about money, they would focus on Candy Crush now. Business is more complex than just the figures. Xbox, since Phil Spencer is leading, wants to be the biggest and best gaming platform, that's their goal. It's a long-term strategy to keep traditional and casual players happy.

@Broosh Dark Souls is on my backlog, I started it up not to long ago but got pulled away by MH Rise, lol. If I wasn’t getting back into Skyrim for a third time currently I’d likely be diving into DS. My only fear with DS at this point is really enjoying it, and then having the series split across multiple devices, bahahaha. I’ve got DS Remastered on Switch in a sale.

And def get around to Witcher, you won’t be disappointed…. We’ll maybe you will, but in a different way. The game can seriously ruin other games for you…. It’s like when Ocarina of Time released and was a pinnacle of gaming for a time; nothing could compare. Lol! But that opening in White Orchard for Witcher 3 is lengthy and slow compared to the rest of the game. On the plus side, shortly after White Orchard you enter Velen and have access to one of the best story lines in the game @ Crows Perch and the story of Uma.

@Dm9982 Dark Souls is indeed a rabbit hole of a series, once you're sucked in, you're in for good. Wikis, theories, etc. Lol
But that's awesome, I'll be playing Witcher alongside Cyberpunk after I play through the rest of the Yakuza series (working on 4 rn).

@Terrin @Banjo- Right. To add to the Game Pass needs, the thing is, GP thrives on keeping people re-subscribing every month. To do that it needs to tempt people with continuous variety and experiences to miss out on if not subscribing. The issue with online games is, generally, only a few draw most of the traffic and draw continuous dedication among players, most of the money is made on mtx, and most of the biggest online games are F2P. Even Halo (Multiplayer) is not a Game Pass game, because it's F2P. And I imagine CoD will go that way as well. For Game Pass, the threat from multiplayer games is that, people will engage with one game for most of their play time and realize there's no reason to subscribe to game pass if they can just buy that one game (then that goes into the Gold discussion, but still...) Plus there's that metric that showed 20% of Game Pass subscribers play exclusively with touch controls on mobile devices, meaning online games are pretty much a no-go for 20% of all subscribers. A game like Overwatch coming to GP does increase the number of people playing Overwatch, because a lot of people like me will try it out a little because it's "there", but on the flip side, it's not going to make dedicated Overwatch players subscribe to Game Pass monthly, because they need to just pay $40 on sale once and get the game they'll play daily.

So the online games kind of work against convincing people to subscribe to Game Pass at all, especially while Gold is cheaper, if it's not paired with a ton of one-off experiences that keep people enticed. BUT what the online games do provide is that popular revenue stream that helps fund all the other games that may be less profitable.

I have no doubt they're actively trying to fill particular online niches to make sure they have all the revenue markets cornered, but I think working to stack GP with mostly online games (a common inaccurate criticism leveled against GP by single player fans) would be self defeating, and they seem aware of that.

Long term, I'm guessing the biggest online games (CoD, Halo, even Overwatch) will all not be part of GP because they'll all be F2P. Halo already is, CoD is probably going to move toward Warzone (with campaigns on Game Pass), Overwatch would be interesting F2P, but I could see them do that.

@NEStalgia A good example of that is a friend of mine that always pays for Gold but not always for Game Pass and he plays Sea of Thieves almost exclusively. Of course, he owns the game since launch and he upgraded to Xbox One X and to Series X just to play it better.

I also think that Call of Duty will have campaigns on Game Pass and multiplayer free-to-play like Halo Infinite but the strategy until 2023 (when the contract with Sony ends) must be a headache now.

@Banjo- Yep, exactly. I think that's the pretty common scenario with anyone heavily invested in a big online game. They also all compete for the same audience. If you're really into CoD, you're not really going to spend much or any time in Halo, or Overwatch, or TESO because they're more or less competing against each other. When a new one comes out, people tend to jump ship from one to the other and all are a total time commitment. Splatoon hollowed out when Overwatch launched because it was really the same player base. Same happened when Apex launched. That's why publsihers have a hard time cracking that market. Unless you get popular enough to replace the king, you're going to struggle to coexist with the king at all. That market isn't really going to do wonders for GP subs at all. And MH game could fare a little better because it's a pretty different thing from the rest. Though I have my doubts that a Western clone of a game deeply rooted in Japanese ideas will really take off. MH's secret is Japanese game culture, and even other Japanese studios have failed to capture that. But I suspect it's about the expectation that MHW2 might be Sony exclusive, at least in Japan again. Maybe worldwide this time.

IDK that the CoD strategy is too bad for MS. They're not even going to own Activision until deep into 2023, they probably have half a year to work out the last contract game and then they can shift to whatever they're doing. The stability will probably be a boon with things going as normal the first few months.

@NEStalgia Fortunately, I don't think that Sony has the money to buy Monster Hunter World 2 exclusivity outside Japan, they can't even keep Final Fantasy for themselves! Not that Final Fantasy is cheaper but more important for them. I imagine that the Monster Hunter World Japan exclusivity was quite cheap considering that the Xbox market in Japan is tiny or was when Monster Hunter World was released. Capcom: "OK, we accept this little $ony cash, as we don't expect to sell many Xbox One copies in Japan anyway LOL". I really don't get Sony, paying millions of $ for timed exclusivity this generation instead of focusing on their own (supposedly awesome) studios. Then they call Phil the following day to ask what will happen to Activision Blizzard games 😂.

Yep, probably it's not that bad for Microsoft. If the acquisition takes one year and a half as expected and the Call of Duty contract that Sony signed is until 2023, they are probably not losing anything. Good point.

@Banjo- In Japan, MH definitely moves hardware. Even PS4 did pretty lousy there until MHW started really selling hardware. But yeah it's not like XB even mattered there, so what was Sony even getting for the money?

I still can't tell if they'll keep ff16 or even 7r. Epic kept it from ms this time I guess, but will 3 see how dq 11 and ff16 go. Can't imagine them skipping switch for dq though.... That IS the Japan market.

Yeah, I really don't know what Sony is trying to accomplish with timed exclusives. Maybe it helps move a little more hardware briefly but it certainly can't justify what they spend, and the games they buy timing on aren't really the biggest games. FF it's fairly big but it's not like it's an EA Sports game or major online shooter that means people have to switch hardware. I really wouldn't think they're making much return on that. I only assume it has to do with optics. It makes their unique library always look bigger than it really is by reserving games from competitors. So more of a marketing expense to give the appearance of more exclusive games then they actually have than a real strategy. It's literally Matricks strategy....I mean... That went well I guess?

SFV was fully funded and genuinely made people buy hardware. Timed exclusivity.... Not so much. But now they keep pretending timed is permanent via misdirection, and that just irritates me...

@NEStalgia Square Enix said that they can't say anything about the timed exclusivity deals until they expire, so it was probably the law that forced Sony to state if it's timed or not and don't mislead consumers as much as before. Look at the release dates and it's always 12 or 6 months later after PS. Final Fantasy VII Remake will probably come to Xbox after Epic's contract expires (it started in December 2021) but nothing can be said officially until then. Final Fantasy XVI has been confirmed to be a "timed console exclusive" so we can assume that it will be on Windows and other consoles eventually. Dragon Quest XII, I don't think that Sony cares more about it than the others. It will be multiplatform day one.

SFV is an exceptional case. Sony paid for marketing and tournaments costs but didn't pay Capcom for development nor co-developed nor published the game. The game is a PC-PS4 exclusive, still is, but in reality nothing is stopping Capcom from bringing the game to other platforms. I really don't believe that SFV will be a PS4 exclusive indefinitely looking at all the Street Fighter ports and collections that have been released. It wouldn't surprise me if the "definitive" edition comes to PS5, Series X/S and Switch and I assume that it will be included in the next anniversary collection.