I think that MHR, once you count digital and physical sales and the legs it will have on Switch especially taking into account a Switch Pro this year (which sounds exciting), will be a resounding success for Capcom. I think Capcom is weighing the complexity of it, but it is likely they will be looking at a cross platform multiplayer sequel in the MH launching on all platforms next time (they have the engine ready and running on all... I think it makes sense to switch to RE engine for MHW2 or MHR2 on XSX and PS5 too yes).
it is a testament to the good design and scalability of the RE engine and the productivity of developers and artists working with it that MHR looks as good as it does on Switch and there may be more potential to extract too. It is an interesting bet that instead of trying to squeeze MHW’s MT Framework based engine they went with the RE engine instead, but it paid off.
I wonder if they could have gone further and simply made a port of MHW and made it cross platform play enabled, but the framerate delta and possibly further cuts to make it fit a 60 FPS target would have been riskier... plus it would have been a very late port and they would have not been able to prototype further MH formula QoL improvements. Again, they got a more cohesive art style and palette than MHW, I know the latter is more technically advanced and demanding (MHS has also more vegetation, collision physics, higher LOD’s, better looking and more dynamic shadows, etc...), but side by side MHW looks more of a mix of a more cartoony fantasy world and shiny CG than the unified fantasy settings in MHR. I hope MHW2 takes the design and gameplay cues from MHR (take MHR and make it 4K@60 FPS, increase vegetation density and draw distance, increase shadows resolution and make even the environment shadows dynamic, add some more collision detection and related friendly AI reactions, increase the collision mesh density for the terrain to prevent incorrect foot placement in inclines, etc... and it would look a lot better than MHW as a cohesive package).