Remember viral sensation Pokémon Go? The game that saw crowds of people wandering around to collect creatures? Its creator is set to release a Monster Hunter game in a week’s time.
Monster Hunter Now won’t fully launch until September, but developer Niantic is kicking off a closed beta on April 25. You can sign up for access at the Monster Hunter Now website.
The game borrows significant elements of the play style of Pokémon Go, with an augmented-reality style, in which you walk around your locality to find, and fight, epic creatures.
While the visual style is less cutesy, more serious, than that of Pokémon Go, battles are still designed to be over within around 75 seconds, says Eurogamer. These will involve touchscreen gestures, rather than virtual buttons.
You may not have played, or even heard of, Monster Hunter before. But, in gaming circles, it’s just as big a deal as Pokémon — particularly in Japan, where Monster Hunter Rise for Nintendo Switch was the highest-selling game in the country throughout 2021, according to Famitsu. In October 2021, publisher Capcom announced the slightly earlier release, Monster Hunter World, had sold 20 million copies worldwide.
What is Monster Hunter Now?
Monster Hunter sees the player explore a world packed with huge monsters that need to be taken down. In the console versions, this world is a fully fleshed-out 3D environment. Monster Hunter Now will scale down this presentation, while looking more lush than 2016’s Pokémon Go.
If you only paid attention to that game in its early days, amid catchy stories of people quitting their jobs to become full-time Pokémon Go players or about the game getting a Clapham club night, you may have missed quite how enduring the appeal of the game has turned out to be.
In June 2022, Pokémon Go achieved a lifetime revenue milestone of $6 billion, roughly £4.83 billion, as reported by Nintendo Life.
A Monster Hunter follow-up suddenly makes a lot more sense. Monster Hunter Now has been in the works since March 2019, according to Gamesindustry.biz, after Niantic met with publisher Capcom, which owns the Monster Hunter game licence.
However, this is not the first time Niantic has tried to recapture the popularity of Pokémon Go.
Pokémon Go alternatives
In 2019, Niantic released Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, a Pokémon Go clone. It was shut down in January 2021, after failing to capture the public’s interest.
“I don’t think the audience will tolerate a mediocre game,” Niantic CEO John Hanke told Sports Illustrated in January 2023, regarding Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. “There are so many choices, so many great games getting made. There’s amazing stuff out there competing for people’s time.”
The Harry Potter spin-off was followed by Pikmin Bloom in 2021, made in association with Nintendo.
Niantic also plans to make a Marvel game in the Pokémon Go mould, Marvel: World of Heroes. It was announced in September 2022, and went live in New Zealand just a few days ago in beta form on April 14.
