Monster Hunter Wilds got off to an incredible sales start when it launched in February. Unfortunately, it seems as though its success has fallen off one heck of a cliff since then – and Capcom appears to be trying to amend that by releasing an endgame content expansion much sooner than expected.
The sales data comes from Capcom’s quarterly earnings report, which includes a slide presentation showing sales data for the company’s top ten best-selling games from April 1 to June 30. The presentation shows that Monster Hunter Wilds sold 477k copies during that period, only just above the 389k copies sold of four-year-old game Monster Hunter Rise. Wilds was the 9th best-selling game of the quarter for Capcom, while Rise was the 10th.
To be clear, even though Rise is four years old, those aren’t exactly gangbusters sales figures either. In Capcom’s consolidated financial results, the company says, “Regarding catalog titles, although sales were soft for Monster Hunter Wilds, the latest title in the series released in February this year, Monster Hunter Rise, a previous title in the same series, continued to see sales growth.” This is technically true, in that Rise continues to sell copies, but calling it “growth” is a bit strong.
Last quarter, Monster Hunter Rise only sold 384k copies. In fact, sales of the game slowed down significantly throughout last year after the game sold 725k in Q1, 640k in Q2, and 691k in Q3. That’s not really shocking, especially once Wilds was announced – people were bound to hold off on buying Rise if there was a brand new game just around the corner.
What’s more interesting here is how much better Rise was selling throughout most of last year, several years after its release, than Wilds is selling now. Just a few months out from its launch, Wilds saw a steep, steep sales dropoff. After releasing during the first quarter to a Capcom record-setting 10.108 million copies sold, 8 million of which were in just three days, Wilds shot up to become the best-selling game in the U.S. year-to-date according to Circana. And while it’s still No.1 as of July 5 due to that initial spike, for the month of June, it didn’t even crack the top 20 best-selling games.
Why is Wilds having such a bad time of things? Well, despite reviewing well initially, its endgame content is sorely lacking compared to past games, so the many fans who play Monster Hunter over time, with friends, are struggling. It’s also suffering from severe performance issues on PC specifically that have yet to be fully resolved. Despite new content and seasons, fans remain unsatisfied with the state of the game, to the point where some players are taking things too far and apparently harassing and threatening individual Capcom team members over it.
An update on release date and content of update Ver.1.021
The expansion of endgame content which was originally planned as part of Title Update 3 in late September will now be released ahead of schedule as part of the Ver.1.021 update. To accommodate this change, this update… pic.twitter.com/aQF1oFMCFR
— Monster Hunter (@monsterhunter) July 29, 2025
Which all perhaps explains why Capcom has bumped up a planned expansion of endgame content from the end of September to August 13. The planned expansion will include a new level of quest difficulty, a new rewards system, weapon balance adjustments, and other improvements. It’s unclear as of yet if this will solve the performance issues, but perhaps it will sate those frustrated at Wilds’ weaker endgame.
We’ll have to wait for more details to see if this is the start of a turnaround or if Wilds will go down as one of the more disappointing Monster Hunter titles long-term. In the meantime, perhaps a Rise Renaissance is on the horizon if fans gravitate back to older games.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
