Not this late it doesn't. An earlier 3DS XI and a later HD XII would've sold dramatically more than the disappointing 4m the delayed multiplat XI managed.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Dragon Quest XI worldwide shipments tops 4 million
- Thread starter sinonobu
- Start date
i just don't see any scenario where DQXI would ever do "impressive numbers" in the west. i enjoyed it, it's a great game, but obviously bespoke to japan and the culture that popularized it. even with a $100 million marketing rollout it's like fitting a circle in a peg square
probably did about as well as it could reasonably do
probably did about as well as it could reasonably do
DQ11 2 month on 2 platform vs DQ9 on 1 platform.
And it is 2 month vs 9 month so it will be interesting to see DQ leg there as i am not as bullish on the positivity of the legs.
Which it is hilarious because the same the Americans love Zelda games is the same way they don't care about DQ games. DQ will never been popular with western audiences.
Yep, the JRPG fans I know don't care about DQ either. As you said, FF, KH, SMT, Persona, Tales of, Xenogears, and others like Paper Mario, Baten Kaitos, Xenoblade... are more popular in the west (or at least between the people I know) even if they are not as old as a game series.
And DQ is doing nothing to get their attention TBH, the saga has really good sales amongst the Japanese fans and that makes it profitable, you can't make everyone happy.
Last edited:
You're right this time, I was talking mostly about the people I know personally, I mixed the two ideas a little due to poor phrasing.
I should add that most JRPG fans I know are far more excited about Skies of Arcadia too (I just remembered).
Even when they found success on Nintendo platforms during these eras, they just kinda went back to mostly exclusively sony consoles and kinda crawled back to Nintendo on handhelds. Just look at the tales of games, symphonia is one of the highest selling tales of games when it released on GameCube in the west and put that series on the map, and then they just sorta picked and chose which one they wanted on Nintendo systems.
There was also that tales of game that was on PS2 that got ported to 3DS, outperformed bamco's expectations and then they just kinda went back to sony again and just put more tales exclusively for vita for some reason
Lol. It's gonna do okay in Japan and be completely ignored in the West. No one cares about DQ in the West. Especially late ports of a game that already had mediocre at best sales.
Eh, I think if is promoted by Nintendo fine enough in Directs and such it will have a better chance.
SE can say whatever they want. But they are not expecting big sales if they only allocate so little marketing budget. It's not a bomb, period. A bomb is a game that sells below publisher or retailer's expectation. Neither happens here.
There was a time when Bandai Namco was putting a Tales on every single platform, PS1 PS2 PS3 PS4 SNES GC X360 WII GBC GBA NDS PSP 3DS PSV all got a title at least, the vast majority were even exclusive.
It didn't pay off, late ports irked the fanbase and they reverted to where their customers are in their main market Japan which are Sony home consoles.
Western markets were, until recently, an afterthought. When your game sell in the 500-700k range in Japan and you get 200-300k out of western market this is not hard to understand.
But then Nintendo picked up Symphonia and it sold >700k, Bamco chose to follow up by releasing their latest PS2 titles (Abyss, Legendia) but both bombed, they also didn't even make it to EMEA market afterwards (Bamco EU being almost non existant back then)
They tried to please westerners with a shiny new episode on X360 and while it didn't bomb it just sold a regular 270k number, on the mean time Symphonia DotNW sold more or less the same amount (230k) on Wii
Since no matter what they did (port, spin off, main entry) western sales would be similar there was no point taking western markets into account when choosing the platform from their next game, and since the mentality of going for exclusives still stuck in Japan, PS2 PS3 PS4 was just the normal thing to do.
There are various others anecdotes (like them trying to go on DS but failing to find success on the japanese market, Tempest DS localization apparently being cancelled despite being finished) but there's nothing impossible to understand in their platform policy for the series looking at the broader picture.
Symphonia GC western success also came too late, of their two teams making Tales games, one was already dedicated to PS2 (Destiny 2 Rebirth Destiny Remake) and the other (Symphonia, Abyss, Vesperia) had already switched to PS2 for Tales of the Abyss after Symphonia GC had lackluster performance while its PS2 port managed to sell more.
Speaking of Abyss, once again, the "outfperformed expectations" has been completely taken out of context: It sold below expectations (250k) in Japan <200k, and the "outperformed expectations" was only about EU market where the game was english only and had a meager first print that quickly went out of stock in various countries like France. After numerous reprints and when all was said and done it only sold 10k in France, a third of what other titles did (Xillia, Symphonia DotNW, Vesperia), so yeah it outperformed the very low expectations they had, that's good but in no way an argument that should be used the way I see it being used.
Calling it a bomb would be harsh true. Disappointment probably would be the correct word considering how all in all DQ11 failed their objectives in building DQ as global IP.
It doesnt matter whether the marketing cost is huge or small if u ask me. As atm SE dont seems to understand what the hell to do with DQ outside of jp.
SE don't commit to building DQ as a global IP as much as you think. Sure they would say that when a western interviewer asks about western localization. What else would they say? The truth that they don't care? DQXI sold as good as the budget allows it to, and I don't see how SE can be disappointed by it.
They developed a PC version, updated the engine, made UI changes, added new content and recorded VA for the game. You're acting like the western release was a low effort but it was anything but.
Nobody can release a 3rd party game with no PC version and no VA in the west. They did what it takes to meet the bare minimum. Xseed developed a PC version, made UI changes, recorded English VA, and added other functionalities for Trails of Cold Steel, doesn't mean it's a big game or Xseed expect million of copies sold. I believe the engine upgrade has a lot to do with the Switch port.
Freaking DQH has PC version, doesn't mean SE give a damn.
Aaaagh I've been holding out on buying this because I really want the Switch version. But I get tempted more and more each day to just buy it for Ps4.
Yeah, a lot of this tends to get overlooked. DQXI had more work sunk into it dev/loc side than any other game in the series. The western improvements can't even be backported into the Japanese release thanks to it heing rebuilt on a newer version of UE4.
Square Enix has already released PS4 games without PC versions, or with PC versions coming later. Right now they have FF: Crystal Chronicles and Chocobo's Dungeon announced for PS4 but not PC.
Your comparison to XSEED is dumb because XSEED is a much smaller publisher dealing with much smaller games but the reason they ported games to Steam is for those games to grow. XSEED would have been happy with the numbers the 3DS DQ games would sell but Square Enix obviously isn't.
You think Square Enix spent all that money on the whole DQXI project to come up short of DQIX?
Also I very much doubt they went to the effort or updating the engine for the PS4/PC builds because of the Switch version that they're still not willing to even show.
EDIT:
I imagine DQXIS will get a PS4/PS5 release in Japan.
SE for whatever reason hold off PC versions for an arbitrary time, but they do come out in the end. Making a PC version day one or half a year later cost the same money.
We are talking about localization, not game development. Translating ToCS is not any easier than translating DQXI. Developing DQXI costs pretty money, localizing it does not. Games that sell way less than DQXI in the west get localized all the time, with English VA. DQXI had a grand total of $0 budget for marketing, which is usually the most expensive part when releasing a game in other region, that tells you DQXI is not high on SE western branch's priority list.
That doesn't mean DQXI met SE's expectations because smaller games like ToCS met XSEED's. Those are companies of two entirely different scales and they have entirely different expectations of their products.
DQXI also had a ton of web marketing which is more than most JRPGs get, the idea that they didn't market it at all is ludicrous.
You know the difference in expectation by different company right? I cant in my mind put Xseed on the same level as SE based on expectation lol.
Like. If any Trails series sold 1 mil on the west on lets said ds, u can bet Xseed arse will focus on that audience forever. This is SE who think, 1.12 m sold is not enough.
There is in no way below 600k is good enough number.