According to VGC, Joker 2 definitely did not sell in the west.

VII and VIII getting localized makes me a bit more confident that Joker 3 has a shot. I can understand Monsters 2 and Terry's Wonderland, since those are just spinoff remakes, but an actual new spinoff is a bit of a different story. Hopefully SE has that same mindset.

I'm always hoping for the best in terms of Dragon Quest. I've also never played a Joker game so Joker 3 would be really nice. However, Square Enix doesn't seem to share a mindset that any sane person would... like ever. I'm hoping for an official comfirmation, not just words from Horii, over DQ VII and VIII and when/if that day comes, I'll probably cry many tears of joy...!

You should play Joker 1, I wont say its amazing I just loved it.

Considering how cheap Joker 2 is, I was going to pick that up sometime; but you say it's nowhere near as good? Why's that exactly?

I feel like they're waiting for a time that's closer to the launch date to confirm localization, so that hype doesn't completely deflate. I'd imagine both games come out next year (maybe VII in the spring and VIII during the holiday or something).

I really don't think Horii would lie about such a thing, but yeah, Square Enix saying it themselves would be comforting.

How should i put it. Joker 1 had a lot more interactions and overall just a better plot, more plot twists and just a better atmosphere. In Joker 2 I found myself wanting to just get out of a specific area and get to the good part. The problem? The good part didn't really exist. The major plot twist, the little twists. They weren't there. It felt a little too straight forward and the "giant Monsters" that were added in felt underwhelming.  I do have to say though the one thing that both have are fairly difficult bosses. Can't count how many times I thought I would run out of MP before the boss died.

For those wondering about localization, it seems to be a trend for SE to localize a DQ game if it sells over 1 million in Japan. There are a handful of exceptions to this rule, but they're all explained easily enough by the circumstances of a given generation. I don't think it's so much that the last two Monsters games wouldn't have sold in the US, but the fact that they failed to break a certain number of Japanese sales within a specific amount of time, so SE was lacking confidence that sales would work out in the rest of the world. I mean, imagine that, on a popular release they can only expect around 10% to 20% of Japanese sales on a DQ game throughout the rest of the world. If the game sells 1 million, that indicates that they can expect upwards of 200k more sales throughout the rest of the world, which can be considered good enough, whereas if the game has only sold around 790k like the most recent Monsters remake, that's at absolute best a projected 158k with it likely only hovering around 100k sales in the rest of the world.

SE does seem to have some kind of defined expectations for the sales of DQ games in Japan before they'll consider localizing them for the rest of the world, regardless of spinoff, remake, or spinoff remake. It probably has something to do with the fact that DQ is their prize jewel right now that they haven't sullied yet like Final Fantasy.

Honestly though, no matter how well this one performs in Japan, you have to consider how far we are into the 3DS''s life. We aren't at a point where the 3DS even has two full years left in it. Nintendo even killed the super popular DS after six years, and I don't see them letting the much less successful 3DS go for any longer. The amount of time between a DQ game releasing in Japan, the potential localization announcement, and the localization itself can easily be a two year long series of events. The 3DS may just not be a viable platform in the west by the time a localization could happen, especially when we currently have no idea when Joker 3 is even coming.

The DQ VII re-make sold 1.26 million units in Japan and it has only just been announced to come over, according to Horii. That game released two years ago; if their thought process was that a DQ game should sell 1 million or more in Japan then it'll be localized then we should've seen DQ VII this year.

All because the threshold exists does not mean SE is exactly timely about localizations. It's a mistake to think the moment the game hits the point where SE would consider a localization, they hit the button to make it happen.

The thing is, I don't think this threshold exists at all. The most recent example of a DQ game in the West is from the DS-era and that's when Nintendo was publishing the games, not SE. Those games only happened in the West following IX because of Nintendo.