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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 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?
All of the main-line Dragon Quest games have subtitles like this (see: Dragon Quest VIII - Journey of the Cursed King, etc). And the head honcho behind the game, Yuji Horii, has stated that it's an actual factual numbered entry in the series (check http://ds.ign.com/articles/750/750590p1.html). And it's got the same Level-5 team that made DQ8.
--- Bwah?
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
I'll wait for a Jessica-shaped controller
There's a little bit more to that aswell ...
Square lost a lot of money on Final Fantasy the movie and Iwata approached Square about how inexpensive game development was for the GBA and how (with Nintendo's help) they could make cheap games for the Gamecube; Final Fantasy: Chrystal Cronicles was a game made by a joint venture between Square that was funded by Fund Q (the new studio fund produced by Yamauchi when he steped down).
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.