You'll be killing slimes sooner than you thought.
User "apujanata" notes in the comments that this date change affects the value of the February NPD Future price.
We've been watching the Dragon Quest series on Wii since the very first unveiling, and now that Dragon Quest Swords is readying for US launch, we've got a chance to really sit down with the product, get personal with the design, and see what exactly DQ Swords has to offer both Wii newcomers, and longtime Dragon Quest fans.
Now that is a valid researched argument. Those I like :) Ok I heard that title in some American forums and it is definitely on the want list of some people. So maybe the sales figure would be higher than normal Dragon quest swords? After gathering information about that game, it could appeal to me (Europe) more than other Dragon Question (As I said, now i read my stuff up). I think, as you laid out, the release date is cruel. If it has heavy competition it has a hard time. If it comes in a "low software" time, it could do fine. So after gathering all that I would say 700-1 Million copy is the reasonable range for me.
I don't think a straight sales comparison between DQ8 and DQ:Swords is fair. One is a text heavy RPG and the other is a "first person adventure" with particular emphasis on wiimote interaction. I can see how this game can appeal to the western market, while not entirely appealing to the japanese market.
I also think that suggesting the japanese sales figures were greatly affected by the wii drought is misleading. Even if this is the case, to my knowledge, this game has not recieved an official release date in NA or EU. So it is still too early to say what condition the market will be when the game is released.
If you are to take VGchartz sales figures as any indication, then there are more than twice as many Wii's in NA/EU than in Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if this game did as well, if not better, in america and europe.
To be fair, Dragon Quest was a series that stayed only in Japan for years, so it would take a few releases before the franchise becomes known outside of Japan again.
I do agree with your point about the timing though...a lot of anticipated Wii games are due out in the last few months of 07, and it'll be a crowded shelf.
Dragon Quest always sells the vast majority of its copies in Japan. DQ8, for example, did 3.61 million in Japan, and 1.07 million in the rest of the world.
(VGC doesn't have European sales for any other DQ games on their million-sellers list, and only American sales for a few.) If the main entry in the series barely breaks 1 million outside Japan, we can't expect 600K outside Japan from a spin-off. Especially when that spin-off will fail to reach 600K in Japan.
Another thing to consider is that this game came during something of a software drought in Japan. In the rest of the world, it will come out AFTER Metroid, Mario, Mario&Sonic, Smash, Guitar Hero, the Zapper, and the rest of the holiday lineup. I really feel there is no reason to expect this game to perform well outside Japan.
I wanted to point out why the recent fall seemed unwarranted to some degree. "150K outside of Japan" (ErikAston), seems a tad bit low, I disagreed and stated some reasons why it should be at least above 100DKP.
Well I don't know how good the game would do, I didn't info me of that, but I know that at some forums people are waiting for it. So I don't know if we would agree, but if somebody is throwing out numbers without any reason or linking the source, I personally like to know how he come up with that number.
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