Capcom has moved its upcoming Monster Hunter 3 release to the Nintendo Wii as a result of high PlayStation 3 development costs.
Originally announced in 2005 for the PlayStation 3, the company announced at this year’s Tokyo Game Show that the action-adventure title will now be a Wii exclusive. Previous releases in the series had been PlayStation 2 titles, but according to Katsuhiko Ichii at Capcom, the expense of developing for the PlayStation 3 forced the platform change. “Due to high development cost of titles for PS3, we have decided to switch the platform to which we release our Monster Hunter 3 title,” he said.
No information on the status of a PlayStation 3 version of the game has been released, and it is unknown if the company will pursue development of the game for other systems. While the Monster Hunter games have met with limited success in North America, it has been a major success for Capcom in Japan, where the franchise has generated over 4.5 million unit sales.
