Monster Hunter World will follow the franchise’s triumphant return to consoles later this month with its first PC release, now slated for the fall of 2018. Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto took to Twitter with a brief video thanking fans for their invaluable feedback during the beta testing process and announcing that the game is currently being optimized for PC, aiming for an autumn 2018 release. He promised more details soon. Tsujimoto ends the video by promising that they will release free updates to Monster Hunter World after it launches for consoles on January 26, including new monsters. There’s no word yet on the frequency or size of these anticipated content updates.
#MHWorld is currently being optimized for PC and is planned for an Autumn 2018 release! pic.twitter.com/82JUC6iIMC
— Monster Hunter (@monsterhunter) January 3, 2018
After several entries on the 3DS handheld, Monster Hunter World marks the series’ return to home consoles in a bid to expand the games’ niche (but passionate) fan community, particularly outside of its native Japan. The game launches for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 26. Our hands-off live demo at E3 last year when the game was announced piqued our interest, and everything we have subsequently learned has kept it as one of our most anticipated upcoming games of 2018. 2017 was a pretty astounding year for gaming, so it leaves large shoes to fill, but Monster Hunter World is certainly a strong start.
An autumn 2018 release will give its chief competitor on PC, indie Monster Hunter-like Dauntless, a chance to establish itself when it soon enters public beta. Developer Phoenix Labs is stacked with former staffers from League of Legends‘ Riot Games, but they are nevertheless an underdog in a genre more or less invented by Capcom’s long-running franchise. Dauntless aims to translate the Monster Hunter formula into a more elegant, Western-friendly package that’s built for PC from the ground up. Capcom has a mixed history with porting its console titles to PC, so time will tell how well Dauntless holds up in a direct comparison to Monster Hunter World. We quite enjoyed hunting monsters in the bright, stylized world of Dauntless when we got our hands on it at the end of last year. Regardless, PC gamers will have a glut of options for hunting giant beasts with their friends by the end of 2018.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.