Monster Hunter Wilds Reveal Causes World To Hit Highest Player Peak Since 2020
Capcom announced Monster Hunter Wilds during last month's The Game Awards with a release date of 2025. We're still over a year out, but plenty of fans are eager to slay the biggest critters they can find, flocking back to World and boosting its player count to record highs.
As reported by PC Gamer, World hit a peak concurrent player count of 138,148 on January 1, its highest in three years. In fact, it was the 13th most-played Steam game on New Year's Day, beating Rust, Elden Ring, and Cyberpunk 2077. At the time of writing, it has over 80,000 players in-game, still going strong. That's doubly impressive when you consider it came out in 2018.
This peak was no doubt spurred on by the Steam Winter Sale. You can pick up World right now for £8.24. Its expansion, Iceborne, is also on sale for £12.94.
Granted, it still hasn't beaten its all-time peak of 334,684 players, but 130,000 is a pretty good effort for a game that's now over half a decade old.
As PC Gamer points out, the same boost of players didn't befall the rest of the series. Strangely, the newer entry, Rise - which is also on sale for £13.19 - only went up to 27,000 concurrent players. It had 15,000 before, so that's still a big leap, but it's not quite as impressive as World's.
We don't know much about Wilds yet. Its reveal trailer was fairly short, easing us into its world with glimpses of a character riding and flying on an animal, with some of the different monsters on display. Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto has spoken a little about what we can expect, however, as he said that Wilds will boast "a new level of detailed creatures and ecosystems", perhaps tying into the dynamic weather we saw in the teaser.
It also looks to be fully open-world, a first for the series.
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