Monster Hunter: World's PC version coming in autumn

Monster Hunter: World, Capcom's latest action-RPG about hunting dinosaurs so you can skin them and wear their faces as gloves helping you hunt bigger dinosaurs to wear their faces as bigger gloves, is coming to PC far later than I'd imagined. Capcom have said that the PC version would come some time after the console launch of January 26th, and today confirmed quite how late it will arrive: in autumn 2018. I suppose I was expecting six weeks tops. Oh well.

Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto broke the bad news in a small video update today.

"As for the PC version, we're working hard on it right now, and aiming for an autumn 2018 release," Tsujimoto said. "We'll update you with more details later and thank you for your patience."

Right-o. That's that, then.

It can be tempting to pick over statements (the tweet delivering Tsujimoto's video uses slightly different wording, saying the game "is currently being optimized for PC") and guess at what's behind this unusually long hold-up, but that speculation is rarely productive - or correct. I'll simply say I'm disappointed that this will be so late on PC.

Given that it's the first main Monster Hunter game coming to PC, I'd hoped to be somewhat in sync with consolechums and their conversations around the game. Instead, we'll arrive late to a game whose depths and secrets are already known and well-documented, when the dust has settled on the discourse and it'll be a challenge to break through that and experience the game fresh.

In the RPS treehouse we're currently trying to peel off the sleeping John's face to make into gloves to console Katharine, as she has been looking forward to this.