With “Monster Hunter Wilds” pitting intrepid players against a menagerie of rampaging beasts on PC and consoles from Friday, the game’s creators tell AFP they hope the 20-year-old franchise can still find new audiences.It has been seven years since the last major instalment saw fans draw oversized swords and bows together, in a series whose success is built on cooperative play to take down dragons and other spectacularly-rendered creatures.Co-op is “really the heart of the series and at the core of its DNA,” said the game’s director Yuya Tokuda.Long queues to test the new instalment at conventions and mass participation in an online open test weekend in October have underscored the anticipation in recent months.”Rather than feeling pressure… it’s actually more of a useful chance for us to see the players’ reactions and also get data about what it is we should be working on,” Ryozo Tsujimoto, the series’ 50-something longtime producer said during a trip to Europe weeks ahead of the release.”Wilds” is the first “Monster Hunter” instalment built for latest-generation consoles.Tsujimoto says this will allow for “even more seamless” play, highlighting that there will be no loading screens between players’ base camp and the monster-haunted open world beyond.Such changes “make you feel like you really are part of the ecosystem from start to finish every time you play the game,” he said.But even on more powerful machines, it was “really quite difficult” to populate the environment with the huge numbers of monsters and other creatures that the developers wanted, Tsujimoto added.There were “lots of programming challenges and also hardware challenges,” he said.- Stoking the hype -The “Monster Hunter” series has shipped more than 108 million units since the first release on Playstation 2, making it a second tentpole franchise for Japanese publisher Capcom alongside the “Resident Evil” zombie saga.It took time and several instalments for “Monster Hunter” to win popularity outside Japan itself.Back then, “we didn’t really have a development schedule… set up for simultaneous localised release around the world,” Tsujimoto remembers.That meant delays of up to a year for different language versions to be adapted, undermining the hype around new releases beyond the home market.”All the news about what was going to be in the game, which monsters and features, had already come out globally, players felt like they’d seen it all from looking online,” Tsujimoto said.These days releases are synchronised around the world to strike while the anticipation is at its peak.- Broadening reach -“Monster Hunter” has also benefited from vastly more players able to join in online with high-quality connections.”Breaking down each of those barriers… is what finally brought us out of niche status in the West and into a global blockbuster,” Tsujimoto said.Nevertheless, “there are still people out there who don’t know about ‘Monster Hunter’,” he added.It was up to the studio to “try and find new ways to make sure that the ‘Monster Hunter’ name spreads among as large an audience around the world as possible”.A first film set in the universe of the games, released in 2020, was a relative flop.That hasn’t put off Tsujimoto, who says “image licensing” is “something we’re aways considering as being on the table”.Although naming no plans for the immediate future, the producer is “always thinking of ways to expand the series around the world”, including to “people who don’t play games”, he said.Tsujimoto and Tokuda did not comment on whether “Wilds” would be available for Nintendo’s hotly-anticipated Switch 2 console, set for release later this year.But looking to the future, “we do still have plenty of monster ideas up our sleeves,” Tokuda said.

Frankfurt equities and the euro rose Monday after conservatives led by Friedrich Merz won Germany’s national election, with investors hoping that Europe’s largest economy can emerge from recession.Elsewhere, London and Paris slipped tracking losses in Asia, while Wall Street rebounded from heavy selling at the end of last week.Frankfurt’s DAX index gained 0.6 percent in afternoon deals after Merz urged a speedy formation of a new coalition government. He warned that as US President Donald Trump is driving rapid and disruptive changes, “the world isn’t waiting for us”.”The hope that the conservatives’ win might help pull Germany out of economic stupor and help bolster collective defence, has lifted investor spirits,” said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.European defence stocks gained, with Germany’s Rheinmetall up 4.5 percent and Britain’s BAE Systems up 3.8 percent.The gains came “off the back of Merz’s call for Europe to seek independence from the US — with the obvious inference that the continent needs to take more responsibility for its own security”, said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould. With more than 28 percent of the vote, Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc handily defeated Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and the Greens, as the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany celebrated a record of over 20 percent.”Investors welcomed the outcome of Germany’s election, which saw centrist parties positioned to form a coalition,” said City Index and FOREX.com analyst Fawad Razaqzada.”However, while the initial reaction was upbeat, it remains to be seen whether the enthusiasm will be maintained deeper into the week, or even the session once US investors come to the fray,” he added.Elsewhere Monday, shares in Amsterdam-listed Just Eat Takeaway soared more than 53 percent after it received a 4.1-billion-euro ($4.3-billion) takeover offer from investment giant Prosus.Asian equity markets mostly fell following a dour end to last week for Wall Street fuelled by disappointing economic data, with a report on Friday showing that activity in the US key services sector hit a 25-month low in February.The drop in was “attributed to political uncertainty, with tariff threats and Federal spending cuts dampening services,” said market analyst David Morrison at Trade Nation.Meanwhile separate data indicated that consumer sentiment dived almost 10 percent from January.The readings follow a recent run of figures pointing to a softening of the labour market and prices continuing to rise faster than the Federal Reserve’s target rate.Investors have increasingly feared the inflationary impact of Trump’s plans to impose import tariffs and slash taxes, immigration and regulation.That has led investors to scale back expectations for how many interest rate cuts the Fed will make this year.Shanghai fell and Hong Kong retreated from Friday’s blockbuster rally fuelled by tech firms, in particular e-commerce titan Alibaba.Oil prices edged up after dropping as much as three percent on Friday as the weak US data sparked demand fears, while there are also growing expectations Trump will ease the sanctions that have limited Russian oil exports.- Key figures around 1430 GMT -New York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 43,579.31 pointsNew York – Dow: UP 0.3 percent at 6,030.99New York – Dow: UP 0.3 percent at 19,590.85Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.6 percent at 22,421.31 Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.6 percent at 8,103.74London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.1 percent at 8,649.14Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.6 percent at 23,341.61 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.2 percent at 3,373.03 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: Closed for a holidayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.0468 from $1.0462 on FridayPound/dollar: UP at $1.2638 from $1.2628Dollar/yen: UP at 149.63 from 149.32 yenEuro/pound: UP at 82.82 pence from 82.81 pence Brent North Sea Crude: UP less than 0.1 percent at $74.12 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: UP less than 0.1 percent at $70.44 per barrelburs-rl/js