Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate was released in Japan on October 11th, and sold 1,446,289 copies in its first week. Japanese sales tracker Media Create says in its weekly report that the game sold through 85.40% of its shipment.
In comparison, Monster Hunter 4, released in 2013,sold 1,715,060 copies in its first week, selling through 91.96% of its shipment at launch. This means that 4 Ultimate has sold around 80% of what its predecessor did at launch, which is good news for the game.
The real question, of course, is how the game will hold up in the weeks and months ahead. Media Create says that since 4 Ultimate is a sequel of sorts, most buyers will have picked the game up in its first week on store shelves (since sequels or follow-up games tend to sell to a more dedicated audience).
As a result, Media Create says, they expect Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate won’t sell 2 million copies at retail until its third week or later on store shelves, whereas Monster Hunter 4 managed to hit 2,188,799 sold after two weeks.
Between retail shipments and download sales, Capcom eventually managed to ship 4.1 million copies of Monster Hunter 4 in Japan, so it should be interesting to see how many copies of 4 Ultimate they can move. Thus far, they’ve shipped 2 million, and by the end of March 2015, they hope to ship 3.9 million worldwide.
