Post by vinitwins on Dec 14, 2006 13:09:54 GMT 6
blog.wired.com/games/2006/12/dragon_quest_on.html
Certainly it is a bad day to be Sony, who just lost another major exclusive. Dragon Quest VIII was the best-selling PlayStation 2 game in Japan. Not the best-selling RPG or the best-selling Square Enix game -- the single biggest PS2 game, ever.
Square Enix has traditionally waited to see what the outcome of the console wars would be before committing Dragon Quest to a platform. This is why DQVII and DQVIII arrived so late in the lifecycles of PlayStation 1 and 2, respectively -- because Square Enix didn't start development until they were sure the audience was there.
But there was a third outcome that none of us had considered, and that was that DQIX might appear on Nintendo DS. If we take as gospel the fact that Dragon Quest goes to the system with the highest userbase, it makes sense. DS is on track to outsell every other game console in the history of Japan.
Sure, it's not going to look as pretty as Dragon Quest VIII, but the screenshots that have been released prove that the Nintendo DS has no trouble with Akira Toriyama's art style.
DQIX might be the first four-million-selling game on Nintendo DS.
That's something else. Square Enix stands to rake it in on this. They could spend three years and 30 million dollars making DQIX for PlayStation 3, then barely scrape that money back. Or they could make a killing on DQIX while they wait. You might call this opportunistic; I call it Nintendo's business strategy coming into its own. You might say that this heralds the death of home gaming consoles; I say there's no reason Wii can't do the same thing.
I don't even want to speculate, now, what Nintendo DS sales will be in Japan over the holiday. It'll make the 900,000 units they moved in November here in the US look like a rounding error.
There are still, I'm sure, some holdouts who believe DQIX to be a stopgap measure and that the tenth game in the series could still appear on PlayStation 3. But it won't. Because between DQ Monsters this year and DQIX/DQ Swords the next, Square Enix is sending a very strong message to the Dragon Quest fan base: buy Nintendo hardware.
V
Certainly it is a bad day to be Sony, who just lost another major exclusive. Dragon Quest VIII was the best-selling PlayStation 2 game in Japan. Not the best-selling RPG or the best-selling Square Enix game -- the single biggest PS2 game, ever.
Square Enix has traditionally waited to see what the outcome of the console wars would be before committing Dragon Quest to a platform. This is why DQVII and DQVIII arrived so late in the lifecycles of PlayStation 1 and 2, respectively -- because Square Enix didn't start development until they were sure the audience was there.
But there was a third outcome that none of us had considered, and that was that DQIX might appear on Nintendo DS. If we take as gospel the fact that Dragon Quest goes to the system with the highest userbase, it makes sense. DS is on track to outsell every other game console in the history of Japan.
Sure, it's not going to look as pretty as Dragon Quest VIII, but the screenshots that have been released prove that the Nintendo DS has no trouble with Akira Toriyama's art style.
DQIX might be the first four-million-selling game on Nintendo DS.
That's something else. Square Enix stands to rake it in on this. They could spend three years and 30 million dollars making DQIX for PlayStation 3, then barely scrape that money back. Or they could make a killing on DQIX while they wait. You might call this opportunistic; I call it Nintendo's business strategy coming into its own. You might say that this heralds the death of home gaming consoles; I say there's no reason Wii can't do the same thing.
I don't even want to speculate, now, what Nintendo DS sales will be in Japan over the holiday. It'll make the 900,000 units they moved in November here in the US look like a rounding error.
There are still, I'm sure, some holdouts who believe DQIX to be a stopgap measure and that the tenth game in the series could still appear on PlayStation 3. But it won't. Because between DQ Monsters this year and DQIX/DQ Swords the next, Square Enix is sending a very strong message to the Dragon Quest fan base: buy Nintendo hardware.
V