Heard some rumors that the translation of this title has been quietly dropped. Anyone know something?
Yea… about that…
DQ9 wasn’t as big a success as hoped. I believe the final US sales was under 180,000 units total and Europe added another 120,000 or something of that nature. Somewhere in the region of 300,000 or so. The game did well the first two weeks, but totally died after that. So given the magnitude of the commerical campaign (i.e. the amount of $$$ spent on it), DQ9 is considered a failure because it didn’t sell 1,000,000 units total outside of Japan.
DQ8 is still the best selling DQ outside of Japan.
That being said: DQ6 has been delayed. Square-Enix is still on mandate to release the title, as the Japanese HQ wants it done, but the US branch investors want to wait until the “bad taste” of DQ9 has been washed out. The game has already been translated and beta tested according to investor release. Right now it’s in marketing’s court. I believe the game might get a subtitle change though.
Just to add: Square Enix is seriously hurting from the failure of Final Fantasy 14 right now, so they’re tightening down for the winter.
As far as Nintendo is concerned - the one who published and funded the commerical campaign - Pokemon B&W is the only RPG worth a damn. I think you won’t see them “co-fund” another DQ again. It’s revealed to them that DQ ain’t “one million” potential… and that’s all Nintendo wants. They tried though… they tried… much how NIS tried with Sakura Taisen 5. 
Well I’m glad its still coming out and frankly I expected some kind of delay, just not a delay till 2012. I’m glad it’s still coming out. I hope they don’t do a name change. I mean the series is still by other measures a success selling over 100k units in both the US and Europe. It’s also makes successfully marketing things more difficult when you rebrand something unless the series has a truly bad reputation.
I think part of the problem had to due with bad world-of-mouth that the game lacked actual wifi co-op and tagging support. There were a lot of people (unrealistically) hoping that would be added due to the geographic difference in the US making the population more spread out.
As for Sakura Taisen, the deck was stacked against them to begin with being on a dying console for the special edition and a minor title on an already oversaturated market for the other in addition to not being in places like Wal-Mart and Best-Buy so its more understable why they failed.
As for DQ, I’m not sure beyond that and the lack of support for those official meetup places (they had none close to me). It’s possible that the RPG, aside from 8-year-olds, the crowd in the US and Europe isn’t playing the game. It’s also possible there is a prejudice against turn-based combat outside Japan or it could be that DQ9 has gotten swept up in the FF14 debacle of anti-JRPG sentiment that’s been growing in recent years.
Beyond the lack of wi-fi co-op and wi-fi connection I haven’t been able to find anything that people have complained about. For that, I have seen people say they would buy it except they didn’t know anyone nearby who had it and couldn’t connect to the internet to play/tag and they felt those were important elements to the game.
I’m still hoping for an official English version of DQ6. But both Nintendo and SE have found the DQ series to be a tough sell over the years. Even though I’m a DQ fan and an eastern RPG fan, I know that the DQ fanbase is small, and that only a few people besides me buy the games and enjoy them.
The last I heard, SE was trying to decide what to do with DQ6’s title. See this Siliconera article from July 2010: http://www.siliconera.com/2010/07/26/dr … evelation/
Also while browsing Siliconera, it sounds like another attempt to market DQ9 is being made, in order to sell it to people who aren’t Serious Business fanboys like me: http://www.siliconera.com/2010/10/31/ni … -to-women/
It’s no secret that DS software sales have declined. An uncomfortable number of fans have learned that it’s quite easy to pirate DS games. I think that’s why much of the software in the last few years has been aimed at parents and kids – that is, people who might be more willing to purchase it. Also, it’s rather clear that the window of opportunity for publishing DS is closing quickly. We’ll see how things go with the 3DS…
One final note. I just checked the Dragon’s Den forums at woodus.com, and a thread called “Dragon Quest VI NA release thread, will it or won’t it?” is currently at seven pages. Fans are skeptical. But I seem to recall that my fellow fans were just as skeptical about DQ4 on DS…
Well there have been reports I’ve seen where they’ve stated the US and EU versions of DQ should be “evergreen” titles, ie they won’t significatly drop after the first 90 days. If so that might ease some concerns about DQ franchise.
Well those fans who thought DQ4 would be translated also thought party talk would be included. I’ve also not seen anyone pick up and try to do a fan translation for PT which I’m somewhat suprised (not that I would expect anyone to finish it, but rather someone to try seriously starting it).
http://tess2.uspto.gov/ search “Realms of Revelation”
Looks like the name change from Reverie → Revelation is probably going to happen, if the title gets released. The filing date July 23, was long before DQ9 sales showed far lower numbers than expected, so it can’t really be used to confirm they’ll be publishing it.
DQ6 prospects are looking… seriously grim. I had mentioned in late October, that FF14 caused Square-Enix stock to plumet, which I unfortunately discovered on day one because I have some of it, but couldn’t seriously comment on because of NDA. Well now I can, because Square-Enix has officially announced the nightmare officially: minus 91% earnings from previous prediction. There’s some people screaming DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM all over the gaming industry. EA has shown an interest in buying Square-Enix outright, if it comes to that (they were partners once). 
On the bright side: the DQ6 localization process is FINISHED, the company merely has not given the go ahead to have game cards pressed and boxed. All it would take to have DQ6 released, is the signature of important people on a few forms. The game could have been out already, if the powers that be wanted it so.
All in all: the FF14 failure gets most of the blame, but DQ9 selling poorly did not help anything. Keep an eye on the Investor Relations page, for when they update the detailed stuff.
They already sacked the dev staff of Fourteen and replaced them with new devs. The PS3 release got delayed so they could fix the game. They’re giving away free subscription months basically indefinitely at this point. All of this means very ugly pain on the balance sheet for this year, especially since the PS3 version of 14 was supposed to hit this fiscal year, and now it won’t.
After selling … what, 6-7 hundred thousand units below what they were targeting for DQ9, that’s roughly betwee 15 and 30 million in revenue they missed out on. I have no idea how that would have translated into earnings, but I suspect that would have made a sizable impact
I didn’t think DQ6 DS would have an official translation due to a whole bunch of factors… but then it was announced just a day or two ago. (Here’s a relevant RPGamer news story: http://www.rpgamer.com/news/Q4-2010/122010b.html ) Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation will be released on Feb 14 2011.
Well I’ll be damned. I did [u]NOT[/u] expect that happen. Not only has Square Enix given Nintendo the distrubution rights to DQ6 - but Nintendo accepted it, despite the investment failure of DQ9. I can see why SE gave Nintendo the rights (they’re going broke right now), but I don’t quite understand why Nintendo took it.
My guess, without seeing Nintendo’s investor statement, is because SE had the game already finished, and because it doesn’t really cost Nintendo much to make the game cards and packaging (generally they’re the ones who charge the 3rd parties for that service), Nintendo really can’t lose $$$ in this venture, so long as they sell at least 100,000 copies.
Also perhaps Square-Enix is “paying back” Nintendo whatever $$$ they owe (cause DQ9 was a failure), by “selling” the distribution rights to DQ6 as a substitute payment. Figuratively speaking…
Well considering sales of all the DQ titles has sold over the 100k mark in the states Nintendo probably feels its a least a money-making title rather than a money-drain, just not a mega-title. Considering that, and that DQ6 is the closest of trilogy to being like DQ8 - the most popular overseas title to date - they might have decided it was a low-risk option.
As you’ve said before 100k is the magic number and while 1m is preferable, being able to consistently hit that lower magic number with a series might be enough in an increasingly competitive market.