Monster Hunter 4 Is Still Facing Shortages In Japan

Monster Hunter 4 is still facing shortages at retail, Japanese sales tracker Media Create reported this week. As a result, Media Create expect demand for the download version of the game to remain steady.

Monster Hunter 4 sold 1.715 million copies in its first week on store shelves. At the time, Media Create estimated that an additional 255,000 copies of the game were sold as downloads, bringing total first-week sales to around 1.97 million copies.

In its second week, Monster Hunter 4 sold another 473,739 copies at retail, bringing total retail sales—not counting any download copies sold since launch—to 2.189 million. However, as stores are facing shortages of the game, there are a large number of download sales that aren’t accounted for, leaving us with incomplete information regarding the game’s total sales to date.

How long these shortages last remains to be seen, but Monster Hunter 4 has plenty of opportunities to sell itself to consumers in the weeks ahead. While it may face competition from Pokémon X and Pokémon Y in October, the holiday season in December will provide a large boost to the sales of both games, as well as other popular software on the market.

Additionally, Capcom have a number of Monster Hunter-related events coming up, such as the “Monster Hunter Festa ‘13” event, which is being staged in five cities across Japan and the “Monster Hunter the Real 2014” event, which is being held in collaboration with Universal Studios Japan.