A decade in the past, it was onerous to conceive of the Monster Hunter collection ever changing into as fashionable within the west because it had develop into in Japan. Now with the discharge of Monster Hunter Wilds final week, the collection is much exceeding its gross sales at its zenith, with Capcom citing 8 million copies offered in its first three days. This makes Wilds the fastest-selling RE engine recreation, a milestone within the quick historical past of Capcom’s proprietary recreation engine.
Quick for the “Attain for the Moon” engine and never, as is popularly believed, the “Resident Evil” engine, the RE Engine has been powering Capcom’s initiatives all through this era. The primary recreation on the RE Engine, 2017’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, is at present the best-selling title operating on it, however Monster Hunter Wilds is probably going to present it a run for its cash. Within the intervening years, the RE engine has gotten a good quantity of tweaking and has develop into the idea for all the pieces from multiplayer shooters like Exoprimal to 2D platformers like Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection to preventing video games like Avenue Fighter 6.
The explanation that is of such technological observe is that, through the use of their very own inner engine, Capcom is saving fairly a bit of cash the engine licensing prices. As a hypothetical, had Monster Hunter Wilds as an alternative employed the Unreal Engine, a 5% royalty would kick in after gross income from the product exceeds $1 million USD, which Wilds blew previous in lower than a couple of days. Basically, Capcom would have been forking over 5% of their gross income to Epic for Monster Hunter Wilds, which they’re as an alternative simply protecting for themselves.
There are additionally downsides to this strategy, which Digital Arts additionally found when it pressured use of the proprietary Frostbite engine throughout all of its initiatives. The RE engine, whereas limber, doesn’t essentially go well with all video games with out heavy tweaking. Final 12 months’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 and even Monster Hunter Wilds, each open-world video games, endure poor efficiency that has been notable of their launch criticism. Then again, this criticism has but to have an effect on their backside line, as Dragon’s Dogma 2 was the twelfth greatest promoting recreation of 2024 within the U.S. and Wilds, as mentioned, is smashing gross sales data. However simply because it has not made a distinction but doesn’t imply it by no means will. A single proprietary engine meant to suit all kinds of video games must be continuously coddled and adjusted, which is quite a lot of ongoing work as wants change.
Solely time will inform how Capcom’s technique will proceed to work, however to this point, the numbers can’t be argued with. The selection to go along with a flexible proprietary engine has paid off in spades for them and may function an observable classes for different builders and engineers within the business.
