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Dragon Quest IX for Nintendo DS
PKFC writes "Square Enix, at the 20th Anniversary Dragon Quest conference, has announced Dragon Quest IX: Defender of the Stars ... for the DS. Developed by Level 5, the game will feature four player co-operative mode and an action battle system. Also announced is a Dragon Quest arcade game called Battle Road. Both are expected to hit sometime in 2007 in Japan." This is huuuge news, as it puts the immensely popular Dragon Quest together with the immensely popular DS. Odds are Nintendo will pick up even more sales on the heels of this announcement. Relatedly, DS Fanboy got a few tidbits of info on the upcoming Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles , also for the DS.
This is pretty much the last nail in the psp's coffin (at least in Japan.. in Europe it's dead since it was released).
But it's nice to see that some big third parties (square's fully back again?!) embracing Nintendo consoles again. Let's see if we get a "real" Final Fantasy from them as well (for the Wii).
This is a huge announcement, One of Japan's biggest franchises headed to the biggest handheld. The more I think about it though, the more it makes sense. Square-Enix has stated before that while it wants to support Sony it doesn't want to pour all of its development into the system. Essentially spreading the wealth to other consoles/markets.
Since the PS3 is already getting a Final Fantasy game, it's probably a little late now to bring out a new Dragon Quest game for the PS2, I can't imagine them sticking on 'waggle' functions for a Wii version and due to their current support of the Xbox360(have they released any games for the xbox360?) the DS is the best choice.
Chewie does not get a medal. Come on, George. Can a Wookie get a medal?
I'm sure the mods had a hard time deciding between troll and flamebait on this one, but I'm gonna bite anyhow.
Nintendo actually takes the time (and risk) to develop different things for their series, instead of releasing the same old crap with a bit of spit and polish. Yes, that means they come out with crap some of the time. It means they will piss off people that wanted more of the same. But it also means fresh games and innovation. I'll take the latter, thanks.
If you don't LIKE the games, you are perfectly free to not buy them. You don't even have to buy the console for them. You can just let the rest of us who DO enjoy new stuff play them instead. In 10 years, if Nintendo is dead, then you can gloat and say 'I predicted their demise in a troll thread on Slashdot!' I doubt you'll get the chance, though.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
"Right, because Mario Kart for the SNES ran on a handheld and supported 8 player network play."
Neither of these two improvements could be classified as innovative - they're just obvious evolution. Upping the player count? WOW! Running on a handheld, just like Mario Kart Super Circuit for GBA did? I DON'T BELIEVE IT!
Again, no one's saying Mario Kart DS is not fun - hell, I was just playing it last night, and I had a great time. But Nintendo has been relying more and more on rehashes rather than new IPs, and it's starting to wear thin. Thus, I attacked the premise of "oh, Nintendo always innovates, unlike the other guys", because I don't perceive it to be true, and I think this perception is reasonably backed-up by their recent releases.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
So the other troll's problem was that they changed games too much, and your problem is that they don't change games enough.
Let me help both of you: You're talking about different games.
Nintendo doesn't release 1 or 2 games a years. They release tons. Some of them are the same (New Super Mario Brothers) and some are completely different (Metroid Prime). Some are similar in feel and mechanics, but different in plot (Twilight Princess). They also have completely new and innovative games (Pikmin).
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
As of November 30th, 2006, DS had sold about 26 million units, while the PSP had sold about 22 million units (worldwide, source: Wikipedia) - not that much of a installed base discrepancy.
I could be wrong but I believe those are shipped numbers for the PSP vs. sold numbers for the Nintendo DS. The reason for this is that vgcharts.org tracks North American and Japaneese sales and has the DS at about 21.25 Million sold in these regions (8,497,000[NA] + 12,809,750[J]) with the PSP at about 11 Million units (6,460,500 [NA] + 4,457,000[J]); basically, I doubt 9 Million PSPs were sold in Europe if only 5.75 Million Nintendo DS' were sold being that the PSP launched much later in Europe and has been reported to be far less popular.
Furthermore, the PSP is, at first impression, a more desirable machine - despite the higher cost, it has (by comparison) lovely graphics abilities, and far more storage. Sure, it has loading time issues, but these could certainly be fixable if the developers were willing to address them (of course, I haven't worked for the PSP, so perhaps that's more difficult than I make it sound). Why the strong developer support for the DS, then?
The DS love (from developers) comes largely because of the larger install base [in particular in Japan ~ 3 DS to 1 PSP), the better software tie-in ration [in particular in Japan ~3.5 pieces of software per DS to 1.75 pieces of software per PSP), and the much lower development costs of the Nintendo DS; in essence, if you are developing a game for Japaneese gamers you can spend 1/4 as much developing a DS game and are likely going to sell twice as many copies as a PSP game.
They are thinking, "We are making this for the Japanese market where the DS is outselling all other consoles combined by 2:1 every week, and the reason DQ outsells FF every single time certainly isn't because of the graphics."
just some guy