This is a real eye-opener.

If SE sees that one of it's flagship titles can sell nearly as much as another of their flaghip titles for a fraction of the development time/cost, they may consider steering the company more in that direction.

DQ9 has been doin really well... but still FF is very strong in the west so i cant really see that unless DQ9 carries the momentum to the holidays, then maybe we might see greater sales

Dragon Quest IX would deserve to outsell Final Fantasy XIII since it is a much better game. Hadn't Final Fantasy XIII been a multiplatform title Dragon Quest IX would have sold more. Anyway the performance of Dragon Quest IX is outstanding, far above of the most optimistic previsions.

no way not popolur enogh in the west.

I hope the better game wins, and IMO it is clear which game is which

What people may forget is to look at the revenue those games made/make:

Dragon Quest 9 = 4.65m X 40 dollar = 184m dollar

Final Fantasy 13 = 5.69m X 60 dollar = 341,4m dollar

To make a real comparison i have to add a lot more stuff, but i think my point is clear.

Good so far the better game out of the two is winning. I hope FF13 will stay ahead.

@edjevink

Excellent comparison, most people forget that. 

not with FF XIII selling some 40-60k a week

Though the first point of comparison I would make is something called return on investment. To make things simple, say you have 2 projects, one of which would cost $1 million, and is expected to bring back $2 million, and another which costs $20 million, but would bring in $25 million. The view you are taking is that the $20 million project is better, because you make $5 million instead of $1 million. However, I would rather take that $20 million, and try to do 20 of those $1 million projects, getting a net take of $40 million, or $20 million in profit. Sure, I didn't get the $5 million from that project; I got more through several smaller ones. And there's the benefit of if something goes wrong, it's a smaller loss for me. I think that's more of what S-E will look at.

Games do not make themselves for free...

There are several other factors that have to be taken into account:

- Production cost

- Sales cost (I'm not sure about FF13, but DQIX's advertising was by Nintendo)

- Publishing costs (Once again, Nintendo handled DQIX outside of Japan)

- Resources involved. (A supercomputer churning out complex HD models could generate two lesser-quality models at the same time. This amounts to time and electricity costs)

- Personnel involved. (The less personnel, the more personnel there is to work on other projects)

I'm pretty certain most of these costs were higher for FF13 compared to DQIX, and that will cost it in the long term in terms of true net profit, which is the figure the company is actually interested in.