Phoenix Labs revealed that the monster hunting game Dauntless is coming to Nintendo Switch. The studio’s announcement of the Dauntless Switch port comes just as the game hit 10 million players on its existing platforms.
The Dauntless Switch version was revealed as part of the Nintendo E3 2019 Direct yesterday. Phoenix has yet to reveal a release date for it, aside from the fact that it arrives later this year. For any fans attending E3, however, the Switch version is playable at the show floor.
Alongside the Switch version’s announcement, Phoenix Labs also revealed that the game had reached 10 million players just three weeks after its May 21 release. It’s safe to say that’s some pretty impressive growth. The game passed 4 million players a little over a week after release. Now, two weeks after that, its player base has more than doubled.
These impressive numbers bode well not just for Dauntless, but also for the monster hunting sub-genre as a whole. Prior to this news, only Monster Hunter: World had been able to make significant inroads in the West. As an example, the fifth generation entry in the Capcom’s genre-defining series has sold over 12 million copies. This makes it Capcom’s best selling single title of all time. Despite this, other franchises haven’t been able to match Monster Hunter: World‘s success. Dauntless is the first of these to even come close to matching Capcom’s game.
It helps that Dauntless tries to follow Monster Hunter‘s lead as closely as it can, too. In comparison, franchises such as God Eater feel like they’re still playing catch up to Capcom.
Of course, Dauntless being free-to-play likely helps in building its player base. Another feature that may help Dauntless—one its competition doesn’t have—is cross-platform play. Dauntless players on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 are all able to play with each other. Soon, it seems that players on Nintendo Switch will be able to do as well.
