Lazy Sunday strikes me again, this time a comparison of all the main line Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy titles, Japan only.

*Dragon Quest X's numbers include the original release on Wii/WiiU along with the first expansion and Dragon Quest X Online, the 3DS version.

Dragon Quest is the game that popularised the RPGs in Japan, the series has consitently had good sales, with all 10 mainline games selling over a million copies, some cool info about it.

• The illustrator of the series is Akira Toriyama, creator of stuff like Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, he work with both Square and Enix before the merger, the whole Dragon Quest series and the Chrono series are in his resume.
• Total sales of the main series are around 30m copies.
• The average main line DQ sells 3m copies (3.2m excluding the MMO)
• The series only managed to achieved a fraction of the succes in Japan overseas, with the only million seller being DQIX.
• Up until the release of Dragon Quest VII the series was called Dragon Warrior outside Japan.
• Dragon Quest IX not only is the best selling game in the series, as well as the best selling Square Enix game in Japan, it also had the biggest FW sales of the series, publisher and the second highest FW numbers ever (just behind Pokemon Black/White)
• An urban legend (sort of) claims that nation wide productivity plummets the day of DQIII's release, with hundreds of thousands of people calling sick, leaving offices without employess and classrooms without students or teachers; supposedly this made the goverment of Japan quietly forbeid Enix of releasing Dragon Quest games on weekdays, crazy.

• Total sales of the main series are around 28m.
• The average main line FF games sell 2m (2.2m excluding the MMOs)
• Can't think of anything else, sorry.

A bunch of FF games have been remade as well, but I don't feel like making a list about that :P

Best to worst selling.

Great thread! Glad to see Dragon Quest get love. Interesting to see how Japans taste in these series is very different than that globally.

Nice! I'm actually kinda surprised that Dragon Quest is generally a bigger franchise than Final Fantasy in Japan.

Final Fantasy does better in the international market because of its ability to adapt to new trends

Btw it was DQVIII that ditched the Dragon Warrior name in the west, not DQVII

Kind of sad to see DQX sell so low even with the 3DS version. But it could possibly be that Japan doesnt really like paid subscription model, just look at FF11 and FF14, both are low too.

Seeing same trends here. Handheld games sell more while home console sales are slipping.

*Nice thread btw.

Not very surprising, it's a well known fact that Dragon Quest is more popular than Final Fantasy in Japan.

This is vgchartz after all!

Its actually somewhat impressive how well the 3DS version sold, given how late it came out, and that the game doesn't even come in a cartridge.

DQX will get is second expansion in a couple of months, it might be able to not become the worst selling game in the main series.

Interesting read!

I didn't know FFVI had sold more than FFXII. I wonder if FFXV will outsell FFXIII
Those graphs are really nice

It's a mmo, the sales are in line with other examples.