User blog comment:Lord Loss/Monster Hunter Frontier G 2 Discussion/@comment-2194133-20130731030046/@comment-3426677-20130731130119

Frontier is free to own but pay to play, so yes, you are technically paying for playing the game itself. You could still play the offline(village quests) on the Jp version of Tri without paying a fee. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on a 6 year old game to come out now on US/EU regardless of console.