On the occasion of last week's announcement of a release date for Dragon Quest IX and the development of Dragon Quest X on Wii, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata made some interesting comments about the popular RPG series.
Here's what Iwata had to say, as quoted on 1up:
With the release of Dragon Quest IX, there are two things I'd like to make reality. The first is to build a thriving Japanese game market together with Dragon Quest that rivals the West's. The second is to form a strong tag team to promote Dragon Quest overseas. At Nintendo, we were able to popularize the Brain Age series overseas, which was said to be unmarketable. I want to increase the number of people worldwide that understand the appeal of Dragon Quest, which represents all Japanese gaming culture...even if that only turns out to be a single person. I'm looking forward to working together with Mr. Horii and Square Enix.
The significance of these brief remarks should not be overlooked.
Iwata's comments about wanting to build a "thriving Japanese game market" would indicate, at least, that he believes the current Japanese game market is best described as something less than "thriving." Indeed, the only company that seems to be totally happy these days is Iwata's. Japan's market has rebounded from the lows circa 2003, but that's primarily because of the phenomenon that is the Nintendo DS.
Meanwhile, Japanese publishers don't know what to do about home consoles -- PlayStation 3 hardware sales are in the toilet, but third-party Wii games aren't selling, either. So instead of trying to figure it out and potentially losing a bunch of money in the process, they're turning to Nintendo DS and PSP. This is leading to a huge separation in the markets, since Western consumers are looking for home console games but Japanese players seem to have migrated in great numbers to portables.
The announcement, two years ago, that Dragon Quest IX would arrive on Nintendo DS certainly gave game publishers the confidence to latch on to that platform. Hence the reason for Iwata's "big smile," as reported by Japanese game blogs, when Dragon Quest mastermind Yuji Horii blurted out that the tenth game would arrive on Wii. Even if it takes three years before it happens, just knowing that it is coming will make consumers more confident in buying Wii, and publishers more confident in putting big-name games on the platform. If you don't think that such a major ripple effect could happen, then you don't understand just how huge Dragon Quest is in Japan.
And that's Iwata's second issue: Dragon Quest is part of the pantheon of Japanese popular culture, but it's just another game series in America. One that doesn't sell that well. One wonders what plan Iwata and Square Enix have cooked up. If it just means that Nintendo will pay for television advertising and host a Dragon Quest drinks night in San Francisco, then maybe the game will sell a few more units.
But what if Nintendo is planning on taking the entire burden off of Square Enix and actually publishing Dragon Quest IX itself? In that case, it would be a fascinating repeat of history. Almost exactly 20 years ago, in August 1989, Nintendo of America, flush with success in the U.S. to a degree that no other Japanese gamemaker had ever experienced, decided to try to get America interested in Japan's popular RPG genre.
You might remember that Nintendo licensed the first Dragon Quest from Enix, retitled it Dragon Warrior, and published it to great fanfare in the U.S.
You might also remember that Dragon Warrior was a huge flop.
With Nintendo and Square Enix in roughly the same positions two decades later, it'll be interesting to see if this time their efforts actually do spark Dragon Quest passion in the rest of the world. Brain Age is one thing, but a cartoony role-playing game is quite another.
Whether or not the plan succeeds, it's clear that Nintendo, for all its worldwide success, is still fundamentally a Japanese company that wants its home market to be strong, both domestically and worldwide.
It's also clear from today's remarks the extent to which the worm has turned. As early as two years ago, when Square Enix and Nintendo executives showed up at press conferences together, it was generally seen as a huge win... for Nintendo, to have the support of this bedrock of Japanese gaming.
These days, the positions seem to have flipped: It's Square Enix, having bet on the wrong horse in this race, that needs to ally itself with power players. To paraphrase one of the message board posts: Compare it to the Square Enix of 2006, just before PlayStation 3 and Wii launched, the company that believed itself to be the kingmaker and the decider of the console wars, the company that said this to the Wall Street Journal:
We don't want the PlayStation 3 to be the overwhelming loser, so we want to support them. But we don't want them to be the overwhelming winner either, so we can't support them too much.
The sorely misguided belief that the strategy of your game publishing company will determine the outcome of the console wars -- and not vice versa -- is what has Square Enix racing to play catch-up this generation. And to have Nintendo's president announce to the world that he will partner with your company to sell your games in the Western markets, where Reggie & Co. are currently -- there is no other way to put it -- kicking ass and taking names, well... that's a huge win for Square Enix.
Let's just hope Nintendo doesn't end up having to give away free copies of Dragon Quest IX with subscriptions to Nintendo Power
