Japan - Almost two years to the day since Square Enix announced Dragon Quest IX for the DS, they held another surprise conference, this time with an even bigger announcement."We're currently developing Dragon Quest X on Wii," said Yuji Horii.
Grinning, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata joined him on stage and thanked him for the announcement.
"Thank you very much for announcing Dragon Quest X on Wii!"
Bad translations aside, other details of the press conference include Dragon Quest IX's release date of March 28th in Japan and a HOT DQIX-branded plastic case for the DS. No other details regarding DQX were released, but it appears the official DQIX and Monster Hunter 3 websites have been updated.
Photos from the event:
Including this for good measure. I may need to make room for a couple more entries, no?
SOURCE
8 comments:
WTF??? What about teh next-gen?!?
i no rite
mudkipz concurs
This announcement was sort of expected but still felt like it came out of the blue, especially since I was lurking a discussion just yesterday talking about how Wii's third party situation in Japan, while better, still lacked major commitments.
So FF12 is at 2.322M and DQ8 at 3.539M (in Japan), according to Garaph. Given the relative sizes of the userbases of the newer insteallments, it looks like the gap between these franchises could spike over the next two iterations. I'd even go so far as to speculate that exposure on the DS and Wii could further strengthen DQ's presence in the US. Dragon Warrior was popular with "lapsed gamers" back in the '80s, and they're one of the major groups being attracted back by both systems, imho.
"Oh shit. There goes the planet."
GameplayWhore, it seems pretty doubtful to me DQ will get that much stronger in the US thanks to DS and Wii. Rocket Slime, Monsters Joker, IV remake, and Swords haven't done much.
Actually Dragon Quest IX was announced December 12. However, the NeoGAF thread in which it was announced started December 10 of that year, so it was an easy mistake.
JJ -- thanks for the clarification. Updated the OP.
Again, while it doesn't look much to Americans since no one here plays it, this is a huge blow to Sony, since DQVII is the highest selling PS1 game in Japan and (pretty sure, but don't quote me on that) DQVIII is the highest selling PS2 game in Japan.
I personally know several friends in Japan who are buying a Wii JUST to play DQX.
Don't forget that the other two huge franchises in Japan are Mario and Pokemon, both for Wii/DS. The only thing left saving the PS3 in Japan is FFXIII. While FF is definitely huge in Japan, it is sadly not at the level of DQ.
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