While they have been rather tame, Didn't they also make some sort of MH spinoff on the 360. Making an individual game from a series on 4 out of 5 current game systems seems a bit whorish.
Sure, if you just go "hurr durr 1 2 3 4" and don't actually look at any of the specific circumstances. "Monster Hunter" on 360 is a MMO with a monthly fee -- it's actually a PC game and only even got a console port because Microsoft cut them a sweetheart deal on their usually brutal MMO rules, and the goal on announcement (although I don't know if they pulled this off) was to do cross-platform play between the two. PS3
could've just gotten an uprezzed Tri port, but they didn't give it anything until they had an opportunity to make an adjunct release whose
only purpose was to provide (again) cross-platform play with the "real" game, MH3P.
(I'm not even going to dignify whatever iOS garbage they threw out with an individual rebuttal.)
The point is, anyone in Japan who's a fan of the series can identify the platforms that have gotten actual MH games -- PSP and (to a drastically lesser extent) Wii. And anyone who looks at the platform strategy can identify the primary selling point of the series -- i.e. multiplayer co-op with friends -- and see how, in a country without a strong history of online gaming, a scattershot multiplatform strategy cuts directly into that. Those 5m numbers on MH3P are a direct result of cultivating a single platform where people can rely on playing each iterative game, and releasing on a single sytem so you're guaranteed to have all your friends be compatible. That's worked great for them so far and there's no indication they'll change that just because "lawl Capcom loves to port stuff!!!!!!!"
Personally, I don't know that 3DS is really a
better choice for the platform for this series than Vita (although I'm sure dev costs were a huge factor) but what
is important is building up a single reliable platform and keeping the audience there coming back again and again. The two announced titles on 3DS suggest that Capcom's already made up their mind which platform they'll be pushing this time around, and while I would agree that they'll change that plan if their first effort massively underperforms, I think it's still relatively doubtful it will.