On December 3, SIE held its annual PlayStation Partner Awards for the Japan/Asia region, during which Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds won a Grand Award (given to the top five best-selling PS titles developed in Asia in the past year). Following the awards ceremony, Wilds’ director Yuya Tokuda and producer Ryozo Tsujimoto gave an interview to the media, and detail from their statements has caused a somewhat misguided outrage among fans in Japan.
While answering a question about how he strove to reconcile “attracting new players” vs “satisfying veteran fans” when developing Monster Hunter Wilds, Tokuda says his team analyzed data on where players got stuck in previous games. The root of the anger at his statement lies in him describing Monster Hunter World (2018) as the “predecessor” or “previous title in the series” (前作 or “zensaku’” in Japanese), even though Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak came between World and Wilds, in 2021.
A screenshot of the interview isolating the phrase “the previous title, Monster Hunter World” spoken by Tokuda was posted to X, garnering over 3.2k likes and a good number of disappointed comments. Similar posts criticizing the choice of words have also gained significant traction among fans. Japanese users interpreted Tokuda’s words as an attempt to dismiss Rise, which was developed by the “portable” team at Capcom (behind Portable 3rd, 4, Generations, Rise/Sunbreak), rather than the high-end console team (behind World, Iceborne, and now Wilds), reflecting some kind of perceived political or internal strife between the two lines.
On the other hand, others have pointed out that the outrage is likely unfounded, given that Tokuda is simply referring to the previous game he himself has directly been involved in. This is an especially important point to consider given that Tokuda was talking about his dev team analyzing its own past work (this context is missing from the X post the outrage originated from). Additionally, some have pointed out that development of Monster Hunter Wilds began before Sunbreak was released, which could be an extra reason why Tokuda ended up phrasing his answer the way he did.
All things considered, it doesn’t seem like there’s any ill intent behind the statement. Still, some fans insist that Tokuda should have been more considerate of players’ point of view and chosen his words more carefully to avoid fueling peoples’ anxieties about the series.
