Dragon Quest 9 First Week Sales Japan

[Steve 3.2]

y-koron said:

Too much uncertainties to predict. Whether SquEni uses 2Gb ROM(under development) or not? How much is the supply of ROM at the release?

According to the supply at current, sales stops about 800~900k because of shortage of ROM when DQMJ was released. And If DQ9 uses 2Gb ROM, strain of supply will become more severe...

# For now, there is no info about the production increase of ROM

I don't think there's as much of problem with supply as there is with the uncertainty of sales.  Since ROMs cost more and take longer to make than disc-based media, a publisher is more likely to limit the number of units made to ensure they don't get stuck with a lot of unsellable games.

A 2Gb ROM (plus some extra flash memory for game saves) is only 256MB.  There are millions of flash devices that hold that much and more out there.  But I'm not sure that S-E will go with such a large cart.  If it does, DS IX will be the most expensive DS game to date.  (I believe FF III currently holds that title with a US price of $40 for it's 1Gb ROM.)

As for first week's sales, the DS's installed based when DQ IX ships (towards the end of the year, no date yet announced) will be greater than the PS2's when DQ VIII shipped (17M).  Factors that will affect sales will also include DS availability (they're still not the easiest system to get in Japan and some people will pick up the system just to play this game), timing of release (prob. late November), and the quality of the game/scores by reviewers.  Since DQ VII had sales of 3 M in its first 9 days, and DQ VIII had 2.8M, I'm going to give it a range of 2.5-2.75M.