Capcom's President on MH:Wilds tanked sales

A new month brings another chapter in Capcom's speedrun of tarnishing its flagship franchise. Last month, we saw the company finally acknowledge its disastrous PC performance and roll out some "totally planned" endgame fixes. (You can read my breakdown of why that was too little, too late here).

This month, the blame game went straight to the top. In the recent interview with the Japanese publication Nikkei, Capcom's president Haruhiro Tsujimoto offered a truly wild excuse for the game's dramatic fall-off. As reported by outlets like IGN, he completely sidestepped the game's quality and pointed the finger at the platform:

"The PS5 barrier is unexpectedly large... This is not an amount that can be easily reached, especially for younger generations."

While the high cost of living is a real issue, blaming it for this specific game's failure is a masterclass in selective memory. Let's fact-check his statement against reality:

The Record-Breaking Launch. Did the "PS5 barrier" not exist during that record-breaking first month when Monster Hunter Wilds sold 10.1 million copies? Capcom celebrated this as the fastest-selling title in its history.

The Mature Console Market. The PS5 is half a decade old. It's not a scarce, new piece of hardware. The user base is massive and has plateaued, and the second-hand market is flooded with cheaper consoles. His excuse might have worked in 2021, but in 2025, it's absurd.

The Sales Cliff. The problem wasn't the launch, as we've discussed before: it was the catastrophic drop-off of player retention and word-of-mouth sales. a.k.a 'the game is mid.'

The Desperate Discounts. If the game was struggling due to its price, why did two separate 20% off sales since launch, strategically timed with Title Updates, fail to move the needle or revive the player count in any meaningful way?

This level of cognitive dissonance makes you wonder: kinda poor decision of Capcom to have their company president as someone with early-onset dementia, no?

Joking aside, let’s be real: it’s a calculated, corporate PR line.

And if you needed more proof, look at his comments on the hugely successful Nintendo Switch 2. He praised its lower price as proof of "cost-consciousness among ordinary consumers." But let's be clear about what this really means. This isn't about bringing a great game to a new platform, no no, it reeks of a desperate attempt to find a fresh player base to sell their underperforming, near £300 MTXs to, since the current one has already left.

What's even more telling is that in this entire high-level interview about the game's failures, what did the president say about Capcom's plans to actually improve the game?

Absolutely nothing. Not a single word about fixing performance, addressing the endgame, or listening to player feedback.

But his excuse inadvertently shines a massive spotlight on the PC version:

This is where the president's entire narrative collapses under the weight of basic math. Let's be generous and use Capcom's own data, which shows PC accounts for over 50% of their sales. If we apply that to the 10 million launch sales, that's 5 million on PC.

Does Capcom honestly consider 5 million sales on PlayStation 5 alone to be a failure? Is that a "barrier"? This is a number most companies would kill for, and it's the very figure that contributed to the "fastest-selling game in Capcom history" that they proudly celebrated.

For his excuse to hold any water, the PC share would have to be astronomically high, something like 7-8 million copies. Otherwise, he is effectively calling a massive success on PS5 a failure. By trying to shift blame, he has inadvertently shone a massive spotlight on the PC version.

And that exposes the most baffling failure of all. If the PC version is so clearly your biggest platform and your primary market, why did you treat it with such utter contempt?

Why did Capcom deliver a technically broken, terribly optimised mess to their largest and most profitable audience? You know, the platform that they repeatedly stated as "priority"? Why have they spent months ignoring feedback, gaslighting players, and promising no real performance fixes until nearly a year after release?