Oh look, the ridiculously popular handheld franchise has managed to achieve ridiculously high sales.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite PSP The Best have apparently shipped more than 3.5 million units between themselves in Japan, Capcom said in a press release today.

The game originally launched March 2008 in the country, and hit western shores earlier this month.

A pretty hefty update for the European PlayStation Store this week, including the full version of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, lots of Tiger Woods stuff, the Sacktue of Liberty, and more downloadable full games than you can sack a sackboy at!

Playable Content

• James Pond 2: Codename Robocod PS1 game (£3.99)
• Numblast full game (£3.99)
• Punisher: No Mercy full game (£6.29)
• Topotai full game (£7.99)
• Red Baron demo (free)

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As was announced earlier today, PAL territorites will be getting Monster Hunter Freedom Unite come this spring. The series has been extremely successful in Japan, becoming the number one Playstation Portable franchise there.

Worldwide the series is also doing very well, with almost 8 million copies sold. It has been so successful that it has inspired seminars, festivals and of course, its own merchandise line.

When it ships it’ll have 500 hours of gameplay and with new monsters, missions and tools. In addition, it’ll have the Via Ad-Hoc functionality, giving gamers the ability to team up and take down the beasts with their friends (up to three at a time). And if that isn’t enough, there’s a AI Felyne companion that can be used to acquire more items for the player, and players can share them by transferring data through the PSP.

Add to that the ability to save to a memory stick (and saving you load time) and being able to transfer over data from MHF2 and I have quite the feeling that this’ll become yet another enjoyable time sinkhole for fans of the series and newcomers alike.