Monster Hunter Wilds becomes the fastest RE engine title in Capcom’s history

Ten years ago, it was hard to imagine that the Monster Hunter series was as popular as Japan. Now, with the release of Monster Hunter Wild last week, the series sold far outpaced its peak sales, with Capcom citing 8 million copies sold in the first three days. This makes Wilds the fastest RE Engine game, a milestone in Capcom’s proprietary game engine’s short-term history.

Shortening the “touch the moon” engine rather than the widely believed “Resident Evil” engine, the RE engine has been powering Capcom’s entire generation of projects. The first game in 2017’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is currently the best-selling champion, but Monster Hunter Wilds may make money for it. In the following years, RE Engine made quite a bit of tweaks and has become the foundation for everything from multiplayer shooters, such as extra platforms to 2D platforms, such as Ghosts’ N Goblins Resurrection to Street Fighter 6 and more.

It is important to note for such technology that Capcom can save a lot of engine licensing costs by using its own internal engine. As a hypothesis, if Monster Hunter Wilds used an unreal engine, it would earn a 5% royal score after the total product revenue exceeded $1 million, and the Wilds exploded in less than a few days. Essentially, Capcom was supposed to offer 5% of its total revenue to EPIC to Monster Hunter Wilds at more than 5% of its revenue, but they just kept it for themselves.

This approach also has drawbacks, and it was discovered when Electronic Arts forced the proprietary frostbite engine to be used in all its projects. Re-engine though the bender is not necessarily unsuitable for all games without making a lot of tweaks. Last year’s Dragon’s Dogma 2, even the Open World Monster Hunter Wild, performed poorly, which is worth noting in the launch criticism. On the other hand, this criticism has not yet affected their bottom line, as Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the 12th largest sales in the United States and Wild in 2024, just smashing sales records. But just because it hasn’t changed doesn’t mean it will never. A single proprietary engine designed to fit all genres requires constant adjustments and adjustments, which is a lot of ongoing work as changes are required.

Only time will tell how Capcom’s strategy will continue to run, but so far the numbers cannot be argued. The choice to use a multi-functional proprietary engine has paid off with spades, providing observable courses for other developers and engineers in the industry.