Greed Killed Game of the Year

A Damning Sales Reality

Monster Hunter Rise, a game released years ago and long finished with its content cycle, is outselling Monster Hunter Wilds in Q2 of this year. Yes, Rise is heavily discounted and has all of its content available. But Wilds is on sale too, despite launching this year. That comparison is brutal no matter how you frame it. What makes this more tragic is that Monster Hunter Wilds’ sales struggles have little to do with the quality of the game itself.

A Game That Should Have Dominated

I have more than 400 hours in Wilds. I love it. I should be screaming that it deserves a Game of the Year nomination. But the reviews and the word of mouth have burned its reputation to the ground, and honestly, the outrage is justified. Capcom’s choice to release Wilds simultaneously on PC and console was celebrated at first. It felt like the series had finally committed to true parity. But in hindsight, this was the decision that doomed the game. They must have known the PC version was not ready. But delaying it would have meant breaking their promise and potentially losing a massive amount of day-one revenue. So they pushed it out anyway. Greed won. The result was predictable. The PC version was slammed for poor performance, and months later, its reputation still has not recovered.

When Your Reputation Sinks the Ship

The game sold over 10 million copies in its first month, which likely convinced Capcom they had dodged the consequences. But Q2 tells the real story: only around 160,000 copies sold. That plummet shows how damaging the performance issues have been. Even on console, where the game runs well, the reputation has spilled over and soured interest. I recommend Monster Hunter as often as anyone, but even I hesitate to recommend Wilds unless someone is playing on console. When the loudest conversation around your game is “fix the performance,” it erases everything else. Steam reviews sit at mostly negative. Every content reveal is overshadowed by demands for optimizations. The paid cosmetics only fuel the fire.

A Great Game Buried Under Its First Impression

There were early criticisms about difficulty and the endgame loop. I think most of those have been addressed through patches. Honestly, some of them were exaggerated. Expectations for Wilds were sky-high at launch. The truth is that the game right now is phenomenal. The monsters have never been more impressive. The endgame talisman grind is better than it has been in past titles. The updates have improved almost every element, and there is still more on the schedule. Wilds has quietly become my favorite base-game Monster Hunter experience. It should be in the GOTY conversation. Instead, it settled for a Golden Joystick nomination for Console Game of the Year and did not even make the main category. Capcom robbed their own masterpiece of the recognition it deserved.

Can Monster Hunter Wilds Recover?

Maybe. But not without major PC performance patches and a fresh marketing push. A huge sale alongside the expansion could reignite interest, but the game will need more than minor updates to shake its reputation. For now, I recommend playing Wilds on console. And if you are on PC, wait until performance improvements arrive. Monster Hunter Wilds could still become the beloved classic it deserved to be. But its road back will be long.

Source: Capcom IR Report, Q2 2025