Monster Hunter Wilds is off to a great launch, numbers-wise. According to SteamDB, Wilds has already reached a peak of 1.3 million active players just a few hours ago. To some extent, these sorts of numbers were expected. Monster Hunter is Capcom's most popular and financially successful franchise in modern years, but this player count also surpasses the likes of Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 at their all-time peak. This bodes well for the game's future and it's worth recognizing why Wilds is starting off so well.
Rise to the Wilds
Monster Hunter Rise, the previous game in the series, peaked at around 230k concurrent players. Before that, Monster Hunter: World reached around 330k all-time - nothing to scoff at considering World is currently Capcom's best-selling game ever. While that will likely no longer be the case with Wilds' release, 23 million units sold is quite a feat. Wilds benefits from the good word of mouth that the previous games had and isn't held back by timed exclusivity. Rise was only available on the Nintendo Switch for a long while and it took about a year and a half before World was available for PC....
