- Monster Hunter Now’s first in-person event made more from its digital iteration, at least during its playable weekend
- The two in-person days generated $795,700, versus $1.3 million on the two global days
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Niantic’s second-biggest location-based augmented reality game Monster Hunter Now has concluded its largest-scale paid event yet with over 38 million monsters slain.
Having started off on October 12th and 13th as an in-person event called Carnival 2024: Shibuya, Niantic later took the Pokémon Go approach and expanded this event digitally to give all players a chance to pay and take part.
Carnival 2024: Global took place on November 2nd and 3rd with exclusive content for ticket holders around the globe, adapting the Shibuya-based event into a decentralised form with new monsters, gear and rewards all aiming to incentivise players to make a purchase.
One lucrative weekend
According to AppMagic data, Monster Hunter Now generated over $600,000 in gross revenue from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store on the first day of Carnival Global, a 151% rise on the day prior.
This increased by another 20% to $722,000 on the second and final day, November 3rd.
The event’s true earnings are likely higher considering alternative app stores and Now’s web shop, the latter giving players 300 Gems as an extra perk for purchasing tickets there.
Furthermore, tickets first went on sale on October 16th, meaning many event-related sales likely took place in the buildup to the event itself.
Even so, the Carnival Global weekend raked in over $1.3 million from the two major app stores making it Now’s fifth-biggest event period of the year based on those two days alone.
Players were encouraged to take part in order to hunt new, limited-time monsters Silver Rathalos, Gold Rathian and Nergigante – earning powerful new armour and weapons in the process.
These monsters and certain pieces of gear will become available for free down the line, but some pieces will remain as exclusives to those who participated in Carnival – including some of the most powerful, easiest-to-upgrade weapons in the game.
Event-only bundles were also distributed over the weekend, incentivising pack purchases for more potions to continue hunting. After all, a player’s health serves as a soft stamina gate in Monster Hunter Now, recovering gradually over time but required to be above a certain threshold to hunt.
That meant even players who bought a ticket wouldn’t be able to hunt these limited-time monsters if they took too much damage – unless they waited to heal naturally (and wasted limited hours) or spent more money on potions.
Plenty of play
Players who purchased a $15 ticket either in-game or on the web shop also had unlimited access to Hunt-a-thons and Elder Dragon Interceptions throughout the event – Now’s main multiplayer features where players hunt monsters together online.
Players can typically only enter one of these multiplayer modes once every three hours unless they pay real money to skip the cooldown, but that time gate was removed altogether for ticket holders over the weekend.
Additionally, monster respawn times were halved from hourly to half-hourly and the radius for spawns around a player was increased for those who paid, meaning significantly more hunts were available throughout the weekend.
Once again, this meant waiting for health to recharge for free wasted many opportunities to hunt rare monsters – versus paying extra for potions after already paying for the event in the first place.
Ultimately, many players must have purchased those potions and bundles as the Carnival Global weekend’s $1.3 million revenue almost triple the weekend prior’s $486,000.
It also outperformed October’s in-person weekend in Shibuya, when $795,700 was generated from the major app stores.
Across Carnival as a whole – both in Shibuya and globally – Niantic reported that over 16 million upgrades were made to armour and weapons, 38 million monsters were vanquished and almost 13 million Special Skills were activated against them.
Furthermore, 670,172 pieces of meat were eaten and 462,560 friend requests were sent in-game. And at Carnival Shibuya alone, Monster Hunter Now got players walking 270,208.5 kilometres.
“We want to extend our gratitude to everyone who joined us at Monster Hunter Now Carnival 2024: Shibuya and Monster Hunter Now Carnival 2024: Global,” the dev team said. “Thanks to all you hunters, the event was a roaring success.”
