The Chinese online gaming colossus Tencent Games held its annual conference today and shown something rather spiffy: the first trailer of Monster Hunter Online.

The company acquired the license of the Monster Hunter IP from Capcom and developed the game on its own, with the beginning of the beta scheduled for June. Monster Hunter Online is based on CryEngine 3 and will be available only on PC with the free to play business model.

While we don't know if the new MMORPG will ever make its way westwards (for the moment only a Japanese release has been officially announced besides the local one in China), Tencent has been looking at the western market lately, so it's not so unlikely that we'll be able to play it some time in the not-so-far future.

I sure can't say I wouldn't be pleased, as the six year-old Monster Hunter Frontier Online is starting to show its age and was never released in English. While we wait for further word on this you can check the trailer out below.