I think that SE wants to get out the remakes before the main serie to strengthen the DQ userbase that lives on the DS.

dqds

Just one word comes to my mind on the DQ 1st day: Riots.

We already knew this, its just that SQEnix is just now getting around to the PR. They have announced the DQ 4/5 and 6 for later this year and earlier next year. Supposedly some time near spring we would see DQ9 after the remakes of the earlier DQ games go on the market and have time to sell and build the hype for it. However this also solidifies that FF13 wont see the light of day until either LATE 08 in Japan or early 2009. Since the SE merger they are not releasing huge IP's of theirs close together at all. A late 08 or 2009 FF13 = a LOOONG time before we get it in the states.

If they wouldn't make remakes of Dragon Quest IV, V and VI then DQIX would have released by the end of this year in Japan, but they have specifically said, DQIX is on hold as the remakes will go first. It kind of pissed me off, but after seeing the screens of DQIV, which looks old school, 2D (please no 3D), I'm getting really curious. I only still find it ridiculous you'll need to pay full price for each of the remakes. I hope the games will become budget prices, but I've got the feeling they won't. I love DQ more than FF games, so I'll bet I'll be buying them anyway.

@Xyrax, DQIX is created by Level 5, so that has nothing to do with the production of FFXIII, neither the remakes, as S.E. has different teams of developers and I guess that the team of FXIII is not working on the DQ remakes as well... Only problem they might have is with publishing, but I don't think either we'll get to say FFXIII before Summer 2008 in Japan. Perhaps we'll get to see DQIX in Japan somewhere in Spring 2008.

I don't think they'll need more hype, the DS installbase is quite big already, a lot of people have bought DS Square Enix games and thanks to the DS, Level 5 has experienced one of it's best successes with Professor Layton.

Perhaps Layton 2 can climb up the DS sales some more, if it will be released by the end of the year in Japan... and I think it will.

 But in December 2007 , Enix will release DQ4 remake for DS

DS will sell to half of the living people in Japan so it's still a long way to go

Hm...
1)Square needs more time to improve gameplay after Zelda: PH
2)Nintendo need to stock up on the NDS to stock up at least 500K available by the time DQ IX is released

I have to wonder if all of these DQ games coming out might lead to shortages of PS3 and Wii (even more so) as Japan shuts down completely and Nintendo and Sony are paralyzed by absent workers.

Sony?

And how did Phantom Hourglass get in here? DQIX is a menu driven turn based RPG. I don't see how one's gameplay could affect the other.