DQ series as a whole now at 50 million.
Following early sales data from Media Create and Enterbrain yesterday, Square Enix issued a statement of its own today (July 14) regarding Dragon Quest IX. The company announced that total shipments for the DS entry have topped the three million mark. The game was released on July 11.
Dragon Quest IX sells 2,343,440 copies in the first two days.
This surpasses Pokemon Diamond/Pearl for the best first week DS sales, but falls behind Final Fantasy VIII's 2,504,044 debut. DQVIII debuted at 2,238,000.
the number is not official!!! please take this number with a grain of salt.
the number came from a 2ch user who didn't want to reveal his identity.
http://dubai.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1247090378/
"DQ9販売本数 19時現在速報値(エンターブレイン調べ)288万7000本 "
Inside Games has recapped a DQ9-related story from today's Nikkei Industrial Newspaper. The paper makes note of the numerous pre-order signs now appearing at retailers and says that retailers are telling it that pre-orders for the game stand out even over past DQ games. The game's pre-orders appear to have crossed the two million mark.
Speaks about the massive popularity and anticipation of the release of Dragon Quest IX in Asia next month. While the DS system was initially frowned upon by gamers, "the Nintendo DS has become by far the most popular console platform in Japan, and gamers seem largely over the shock."
7 million would be quite a step up for this series. Probably VII or VIII would be the previous tops. VIII came in at just under 5 million, and VII was probably in the same territory. For 7 million to happen the series would basically need to keep doing ~4 million (or more) in Japan, while also exploding in the west.
I don't have the numbers by me to check on this, but I doubt the western releases of Rocket Slime, Monsters Joker, IV, and V combined have come anywhere near multiple millions.
Despite my qualms, I came away from the DQ9 booth with a feeling of relief. The simple, intrinsic single-player DQ experience remains completely unaffected by either hardware specs or multiplayer modes. I've played enough Dragon Quests to know that I'll enjoy my latest outing with Horii, Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama...in all likelihood, just as much as I have in the past. If the final version's multiplayer does turn out to be something great, it will just be icing on the cake.
Just because the Japanese have a big marketing budget doesn't mean that they can they market their way to success. Sometimes even high quality games don't grab the interest they should in the United States of America.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said:
"I would like to form a strong tag team to promote Dragon Quest overseas. I want to increase the number of people worldwide that understand the appeal of Dragon Quest, which represents all Japanese gaming culture...even if that only turns out to be a single person." Will the Nintendo stamp on Dragon Quest make it the next Pokémon or Brain Training? Will a $20 million marketing machine for an extremely Japanese RPG ensure U.S. success?
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