Monster Hunter World just sold over 2 million copies in Japan* in 3 days That makes it:
-The highest opening for a Monster Hunter game
in Japan-The highest opening for a PS4 game in Japan
-The highest selling PS4 game in Japan outselling the LTD sales of even Dragon Quest XI and FFXV
For reference, the last console debut Monster Hunter was MH3 which debuted at 500k sales in Japan. A Major decrease from 2 which was on PSP. The train of thought being that MH doesn't sell on consoles.
Not only is this the first time in like 10-15 years we are seeing a Monster Hunter selling well on consoles in Japan
this is like the first time in 10-15 years that we are seeing console gaming actually do well in Japan which had thought to have been a market where traditional consoles were on their way out (Switch is doing great,
but I attribute that more to it also being a portable and portables do very well in Japan).Absolute insane result. Between this and the western sales doing in the millions and the game sold out worldwide. We're going to see Capcom ride this MHW train for a while to come. Probably get that G-rank expansion sooner than later, then a MHW2, etc...plus Capcom just saved themselves financially for a while which should help them across the board.
There is no doubt at all at this point that Monster Hunter is the biggest non-Nintendo-first-party franchise in Japan. Nothing else even gets close to touching it anywhere. Crazy.
*edit - Clarification, the 2 million number is directly from Capcom JPN and includes 650k digital sales from JPN+Asia, so the Japan number is probably closer to 1.5-1.7 with 300-500k being digital sold in Asia. At most it puts is on par or slightly below MH4 launch in Japan, but doesn't change anything else in how impressive the sales are.