Initially announced at the time of the Wii's E3 debut in 2006, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles--The Crystal Bearers has since been through three long years of development, and now the game is about to make its debut.  The game will hit first in Japan this November, while American gamers will get the game the following month.  Anticipation for this game has been high... for the first time since Final Fantasy VI on the SFC, a Nintendo console has been graced with a full-fledged FF adventure--a rarity for the Crystal Chronicles series.

And yet, there are forces that are threatening to work against this title.  Posters at NeoGAF had been predicting that the title would fail in its Japanese release due to being significantly more "Western" than most Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle adventures have been, while others were hopeful that it would do respectable business.  With the recent Famitsu score of 30/40, however, the doomsayers have been increasing, declaring that this title has no chance on either side of the country.

However, the actual comments of the reviews did not match the scores; indeed, the reviewers' comments were actually pretty favorable, with only a fair amount of minor gripes.

Which leads me to make the following questions.

1) Will this score ensure that the game will die an unexpected death in Japan?  Or will loyal FF fanatics give it a chance?

2) If the game does indeed fail, will Square-Enix pull its support from Wii, shifting DQX to, say, any other console?

3) Does the game have any chance of success elsewhere aside from Japan?  North America?  Europe?

At this point, it is hard to tell.  But whether the title is a hit or not, one thing is certain:  the proof is in the pudding.

Miss.

IMO, a miss

Moderate Hit.

Probably 700k lifetime.

Which isn't bad..

Seems to be a lot of threads revolving around this game's supposed demise all of a sudden.

Also you need to define "hit" and "miss" in this game's case. This place is no where near GameFAQs levels but lets not be naive, it is festering with trolls. TCB could sell a million in Japan and people would still be screaming "miss" and "flopz!" Monster Hunter 3 proved just how desperate fanboys can get.

1) Famitsu reviews don't make or break games in Japan.

2) The suggestion that FFCC could impact DQX's is almsot offensive. Dragon Quest is going to sell more than it and even FF13. Dragon Quest goes to the largest audience. This rule is not going to magically change because a FF spinoff didn't light up the charts.

3) Of course. It's Final Fantasy.

More important question. Is it coming out before or after Tales of Graces?

Before.

ToG comes out in December sometime IIRC. It won't outsell Tales of Graces but I think it will come pretty close. Crystal Bearers has damn near everything in it.. I don't see how anybody could NOT be excited about this game.

hm... I asked because in my mind the Wii is kind of like the 360 in Japan in terms of it's traditional hardcore* game userbase. It's so far had very very few titles and is struggling to prove itself one title at a time, just like the 360 did. And for the 360 it's been a relative success, with each new big game seeing bundles, hardware spikes and other game software spikes.

Well that's what I see for the Wii. FF will see not just a hardware boost and software boost for older titles (like Monster Hunter) but it will sell those consoles to the kind of gamers that will be more likely to buy Tales of Graces when it comes out, which will again bump hardware to that demographic and make it more likely that the next big release will see better numbers.

*what is hardcore, that's not hardcore yadda yadda yad... you know what I mean!

I think it'll fall somewhere in between. It won't flop, but I don't think it'll set the charts on fire.

^^ ya i agree

but who knows? maybe it'll perform better than we expect... and it's coming out before ToG so that shouldn't hurt it, but is it being bundled? ToG is being bundled and that should help it with sales.