Japan loves their monster collecting, dungeon crawling, and online-enabled role-playing games more than most, and few games in their home country carry as much instant-cache as Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise. Make that near-ubiquitous Monster Hunter franchise, as the company has finally announced plans to expand their virtual domain across a new platform - the Xbox 360.
Monster Hunter Frontier Online is slated to hit Japanese Xbox 360 consoles this May in a closed-beta, and will (presumably) go wide soon after. A port of the 2007 PC MMO (massively-multiplayer online) adventure, the Xbox 360 version will likewise require would-be monster collectors to pony up 1,400 yen (roughly $15 US) monthly to partake in this magical online world, although there seems to be some confusion as to whether the monthly fee auto-upgrades the console's Silver (free) accounts into genuine Gold (paying) accounts. The game already has a massive hurdle to overcome, finding itself on the least-popular platform in the country, and subscription fees (game) on top of existing subscription fees (Xbox Live) may not sit well with even the most diehard Monster Hunter fans.
Keep reading for more details and debut trailer for Monster Hunter Frontier Online for the Xbox 360!
Capcom will set the Xbox 360 servers apart from its PC counterpart, although the company plans to eventually merge the two into one giant ball of MMO-adventure fun. Also, it looks like the game will be available through Xbox Live Arcade exclusively, meaning no additional DVDs taking up valuable space and making this a true online-only experience. While porting titles from PC to Xbox 360 is a relatively common process, only time will tell if the game will released outside of its native Japan. Also, its interesting to question whether the PlayStation 3 (which was originally supposed to house Monster Hunter Tri, before heading to the Nintendo Wii) will ever get their own version.
Thank to Famitsu for the news, and enjoy the debut trailer for Monster Hunter Frontier Online for the Xbox 360!
blog comments powered by Disqus