Monster Hunter 4 breaks 3 million sold in Japan, keeps on truckin' into the holiday season

Gamers across the English-speaking Internet have been declaring for years now that the Japanese game industry is dead or dying. However, as the past couple months have proven, this doesn't apply to at least two franchises: Pokemon and Capcom's Monster Hunter.

The latest issue of Famitsu reported that Monster Hunter 4, released on Nintendo 3DS on Sept. 14 in Japan, has just broken the three-million sales mark in that country. Two months after launch, it's still selling at the rate of 40,000 copies or so a week in Japan, even after charting 1.88 million copies sold in the first two days after release. (The game was a massive boon to 3DS sales, too — Nintendo sold 298,000 systems the week after MH4's release, over four times the figure for the previous week.)

Capcom, which released a patch for MH4 last week meant to combat save-file hackers messing around with the game's guild quests, is no doubt counting on the title to boost profits for the holiday season across Asia.

"With the tenth anniversary of the franchise approaching, 2014 should be an even more exciting year for MH than ever before," Famitsu wrote. "MH4 continues to generate a lot of attention in the market, and we can expect sales to continue going forward. Going into the holiday season, the newly-improved MH4 will likely have even more of a performance to show us."