Famitsu sales: Week 21, 2021 - (May 17 - May 23)

[The_Liquid_Laser]

IcaroRibeiro said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

DQ12 will either be Switch exclusive or it will be Switch/Playstation multiplat.  There is a 0.0% chance that DQ12 will be a PS5 exclusive.  Sony has never given a damn about Dragon Quest, while Nintendo has been trying to sell it outside of Japan since Dragon Quest 1 (and they never seem to give up hope that it will happen one day).  Sony will be fortunate if DQ12 ends up on PS4/PS5 even as a multiplat release.  They definitely won't make some special deal with SquareEnix for exclusivity.  They'll pay for another Final Fantasy game before they'd ever consider paying for Dragon Quest.

They don't need to pay for anything. The announcement of DQ gave me vibes they are aiming to catch international audiences. Success of DQ XI rose western audience awareness towards this IP, I'm sure they will use fancy graphics and a more open world design as a way to turn DQ into mainstream audiences after all, we are not talking about a game that has only japanese appeal. The single idea of DQ being Switch exclusive makes no sense to me, if they bothered to release a Xbox version almost nobody bought why would they ditch a platform that provided ~35% of DQ XI sales even in Japan arguably the Nintendoland?

Dragon Quest XI is an anomaly.  It was the only time a mainline Dragon Quest was originally developed for two systems at once.  Usually they just put it on the most popular system in Japan.  In generation 8 this was a problem though.  Do they put it on the 3DS and have low quality graphics and lower price point like DQ9, or do they put it on the PS4 but hugely gimp their sales?  In the end they did both.  PS4 was not good enough to carry the franchise alone though, so they had to make a 3DS version for Japan only.  Japan is the main market for DQ.  They aren't going to alienate the Japanese market no matter how badly they want to sell to the rest of the world.

With the Switch there is no need for a second platform.  It's easily the preferred platform in Japan, and it's also really popular in the rest of the world.  On top of that it's always been Nintendo (and not Sony) who has wanted Dragon Quest to sell in the rest of the world.  They have been trying this since DQ1.  They made a major push (unsuccessfully) with DQ9 as well.  And if you recall when DQ11 came to the Switch it got a whole lot of marketing from Nintendo even though it was a port from another system.  They probably marketed DQ11 about as much as MH Rise, which makes no sense when MH Rise is an exclusive and DQ11 is a port of an older game.  Nintendo has always been very gung ho to get DQ to sell outside of Japan.

This notion of getting DQ to sell outside of Japan is something I've been hearing from Nintendo for decades.