I saw the news yesterday and immediately assumed that was correct, but I had only seen the news; no scans. This scan has people with the same outlines, so... yeah, pretty much confirmed.
A little disappointing, but not unexpected. Portable 1 sold like gangbusters in Japan, and it's only real failure to becoming a true Monster Hunter threat (lol, as if) was that it only had adhoc multiplayer and not online, which this sequel seems to fix.