Monster Hunter Rise, the sixth entry in Capcom's action-RPG video game series, is set to be a very exciting launch, especially in Japan. In fact, one company is giving their employees the day off for a "Monster Hunter Rise Launch Day" holiday because so many were planning on taking the day off already.
As discovered by @Stealth40k on Twitter and reported by Yahoo Japan, the CEO of the company Mark-on Co., Ltd, which is focused on VR and 3D modeling, announced today that they would be giving a company-wide day off in three days. The reason? Monster Hunter Rise is releasing, and many of the company's employees were going to take the day off to buy and play the game. In a tweet, CEO Masaki Hiyama said on Twitter (via Google Translate) that "Many employees take a vacation on this day, so I took a day off all together."
This is amazing...... a Japanese Company is giving employees the day off for a new holiday "Monster Hunter Rise Launch Day" because so many employees were planning on taking the day off anyway.
— Stealth (@Stealth40k) March 23, 2021
Source: https://t.co/yY77qRCUtw
It can be hard to imagine a company taking a day off because they know so many of their workers will be playing a new video game. However, the Monster Hunter series is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. In fact, past releases in the series were primarily successful in Japan on Nintendo systems up until Monster Hunter World, which was a world-wide success and skipped Nintendo's system. Estimates suggest that Monster Hunter Rise will sell over 1.5 million physical units at launch, and this number doesn't take into account digital purchases, which will also likely be a large amount. Exactly how well it does worldwide will be interesting to see.
Monster Hunter Rise releases worldwide on the Nintendo Switch on March 26th. A Steam port of the game is expected to release sometime in early 2022.
