According to Eurogamer, Capcom plans to bring its stupendously profitable PlayStation Portable hit Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd G to Europe – and it will be one of the first games to offer online Ad Hoc multiplayer when hooked up to a PlayStation 3.
Capcom will publish the game as Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, possibly because Europeans associate the word "unite" with Manchester United and football teams in general. That’s our line, anyway, and we’re sticking by it.
Despite being fundamentally a stand-alone expansion (albeit a pretty weighty one) to a PSP game itself derived almost entirely from a PlayStation 2 title, MHF2G has racked up multiple millions of unit sales since its Japanese launch in March. The PSP has done rather well out of this, becoming Japan’s best-selling console for the first half of 2008.
Western gamers have proven less keen on the series thus far, mainly on account of its overwhelmingly intricate gameplay and steep time requirements. The absence of infrastructure multiplayer for the PSP games is another sore point, which makes the new indirect online functionality a welcome prospect indeed: the latter is scheduled for release in Japan on October 30, and should hopefully migrate overseas not long after. Expect more technical specifics as we get them.
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite comes out in spring 2009.