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[kswiston]

I personally think DQ5 on SNES would have made a big difference. It was a very strong game and a lot of folks were playing SNES RPGs.

I doubt it would have made much of a difference.

No one was playing JRPGs on the SNES. Someone with numbers can clarify things, but I think that Super Mario RPG was the only SNES JRPG to break 500k in the west. You can see numbers for the Square stuff.

Either Gamepro or EGM used to shove RPGs into their own little ghetto segment at the back part of their magazine during that era, because the games weren't popular enough to warrant better coverage.

Maybe more people would have remembered Dragon Quest when DQ7 was localized, but even then you have an archaic looking game trying to compete with Chrono Cross, FFIX and X.

EDIT: JRPGs seemed bigger than they were in the late 90s/early 2000s because the small handful of series that people actually played were getting regular mainline releases. Everything else has been as niche as ever. You can count the non Pokemon/Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts/Mario JRPGs that broke 500k in the west in the 90s on your hands. Adding in your toes might get you through the PS2 generation as well.

 

[Arkeband]

Looking back on how the SNES catalogue is regarded now in the lens of gaming history, the absence of DQ for the western audience is basically crippling. Games like Earthbound were basically revived through having a single character in Smash Bros, imagine what a supported and ongoing IP would have had even if it was released to lukewarm sales numbers in that era.

 

[Lord of Ostia]

I can tell Square Enix the reason why I haven't really bothered playing a Dragon Quest game, even though I am well aware of it's qualities.
It's Toriyama's art style. I do like other cartoon/anime-inspired art styles, that's not the problem. Toriyama's particular style does imo not go well with a whimsical fantasy game though. It's too simple, plain and unappealing. It imo suits a shounen manga much better.

This is so bizarre, considering the typical JRPG plot, characters, etc. is incredibly similar to what you would find in shonen manga/anime. In fact, it's gone full circle as tons of manga and anime today are aping the tropes of JRPGs and seeing success doing so. Toriyama's artwork is just as suited to Dragon Quest as it is Dragonball, the only difference is that one series is fantasy and the other is slightly sci fi with fantasy elements. If you just don't like Toriyama's artwork then fine, that sort of thing is very subjective. But not fitting the style of a Dragon Quest game? Ridiculous.

 

[Square2015]

No one was playing JRPGs on the SNES. Someone with numbers can clarify things, but I think that Super Mario RPG was the only SNES JRPG to break 500k in the west. You can see numbers for the Square stuff.

Yeah,
Super Mario RPG 579k NPD.

 

[Ridley327]

Yeah,
Super Mario RPG 579k NPD.

I have to wonder how much lower that total would be if it was a new IP. Like, I know people love Geno and all that, but he wasn't going to carry a game.

 

[AgeEighty]

They didn't have much of a choice with DQ3-4. Enix brought the first game to North America over 3 years after the Japanese release. We got 4 of them in 3 years. DW3 and 4 sold terribly, so they didn't bother with 5-6.

That's not totally accurate. A major reason why the Super Famicom DQ games never made it West was technical.

An English translation requires more memory than the original Japanese, and localizing DQV would have required them to use larger, more expensive ROM chips for the carts than they had used in Japan. With DQVI the script was so large that even the Japanese version was already filling up the largest 32Mb cart the Super Famicom had available, so there was literally no way to put an English version on an SNES cart.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

I never thought DQ looked cartoonish. I thought it looked animeish because I watched Dragonball and given the popularity of that I thought that would give it a boost.

Had a couple brothas comment on the similarity when I was playing VIII and Chrono Trigger.

 

[ubercheez]

I've never given it a second glance due to the character art style. Just can't get past Toriyama, personally -- Dragon Quest or otherwise.

 

[AgeEighty]

I've never given it a second glance due to the character art style. Just can't get past Toriyama, personally -- Dragon Quest or otherwise.

For the first few games, the in-game art isn't really recognizably Toriyama style except for the monsters, and even with those it's usually hard to tell it's him.

 

[jwhit28]

I'm not sure how much sales numbers can gauge if a series is building a presence or not. This is 100% anecdotal but I know I built my gaming taste through used 16bit games and later emulation. How many people that would call Earthbound one of the best games ever have ever even seen a real cart?

If you were too young for Dragon Warrior NES advertising, I don't think there was anything to even point you towards seeing if the series was a hidden gem until DQVIII came around. Then you still had to patch the SNES games. I honestly thought DQVII was a re-release of some SNES game I missed like how Square was putting out FFV. I mean it was 1 or 2 months away from FF IX.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

I've never given it a second glance due to the character art style. Just can't get past Toriyama, personally -- Dragon Quest or otherwise.

 

[Tyaren]

If you just don't like Toriyama's artwork then fine, that sort of thing is very subjective. But not fitting the style of a Dragon Quest game? Ridiculous.

Your post is ridiculous.
First of all I used imo (in my opinion) two times and I also didn't say the style is not fitting a Dragon Quest game, I said it is imo not fitting a whimsical fantasy game.

 

[ubercheez]

For the first few games, the in-game art isn't really recognizably Toriyama style except for the monsters, and even with those it's usually hard to tell it's him.

By that you mean the NES/SNES-era stuff, I assume? I suppose if they'd released the SNES games in the west, I might have played them and had some frame of reference for the later stuff. As it was, the first I recall hearing of the series was DQ8, which is unmistakably Toriyama.

Hey, I likes what I likes.

 

[Manmademan]

I doubt it would have made much of a difference.

No one was playing JRPGs on the SNES. Someone with numbers can clarify things, but I think that Super Mario RPG was the only SNES JRPG to break 500k in the west. You can see numbers for the Square stuff.

Either Gamepro or EGM used to shove RPGs into their own little ghetto segment at the back part of their magazine during that era, because the games weren't popular enough to warrant better coverage.

Maybe more people would have remembered Dragon Quest when DQ7 was localized, but even then you have an archaic looking game trying to compete with Chrono Cross, FFIX and X.

EDIT: JRPGs seemed bigger than they were in the late 90s/early 2000s because the small handful of series that people actually played were getting regular mainline releases. Everything else has been as niche as ever. You can count the non Pokemon/Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts/Mario JRPGs that broke 500k in the west in the 90s on your hands. Adding in your toes might get you through the PS2 generation as well.

Exactly. There's a lot of very strange historical revisionism in regards to SNES RPGs and how many people were actually playing them.

High profile JRPGS like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and secret of mana had sales that we would consider abysmal today. Maybe 300K or so. Square barely put any effort into those stateside releases either. FF4s completely busted translation and easy mode for Americans is hardly a secret. High profile games like SD3, Mystic Arc, FF5, Bahamut Lagoon, and Tactics Ogre just flat out not getting a release isn't either.

I vaguely recall Ogre Battle: MOTBQ got a print run somewhere between 10 and 20k copies TOTAL.

Those games were completely out of sync with what the mainstream was buying, and no one really made much of an effort to popularize them until Sony partnered with square on FF7.

Dragon quest 5 and 6 had they been released would have bombed like every other RPG at the time without Mario in it.

 

[O Canada Our Home and Native Land]

Exactly. There's a lot of very strange historical revisionism in regards to SNES RPGs and how many people were actually playing them.

High profile JRPGS like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and secret of mana had sales that we would consider abysmal today. Maybe 300 or 400k. Square barely put any effort into those stateside releases either. FF4s completely busted translation and easy mode for Americans is hardly a secret. High profile games like SD3, Mystic Arc, FF5, Bahamut Lagoon, and Tactics Ogre just flat out not getting a release isn't either.

I vaguely recall Ogre Battle: MOTBQ got a print run somewhere between 10 and 20k copies TOTAL.

Those games were completely out of sync with what the mainstream was buying, and no one really made much of an effort to popularize them until Sony partnered with square on FF7.

Dragon quest 5 and 6 had they been released would have bombed like every other RPG at the time without Mario in it.

SNES rpgs were niche, but they sold well enough. Squaresoft made a tv advert for FF6. They also made an rpg developed by a NA studio, Secret of Evermore. FF7 reached high sales levels is because of good word of mouth about FF6. Squaresoft abandoning Nintendo was big news back then.

 

[MacTag]

If Enix had just closed down their US branch a year or two later we could've gotten The Seventh Saga II, Terranigma, Dragon Warrior V (DQVI), and maybe Tactics Ogre and Star Ocean.

Same for Square and Secret of Mana 2, Romancing SaGa 3 (possibly as FFIV) and some others.

 

[sn00zer]

I'm still gunna go with dumb looking enemies. It's the reason I stopped playing DQ8. Played the DQ Heroes 2 Japanese demo which was excellent but, by god, those are some dumb looking enemies. Googly eye executioners were just bad.

 

[Zee-Row]

I'm kinda glad Dragon Quest 6 didn't get localized as Dragon Warrior 5. It would have been another confusing numbering fiasco like what the SNES Final Fantasys went through.

 

[1upsuper]

Your post is ridiculous.
First of all I used imo (in my opinion) two times and I also didn't say the style is not fitting a Dragon Quest game, I said it is imo not fitting a whimsical fantasy game.

Toriyama's art style is the epitome of whimsical. Your post makes zero sense to me.

I'm still gunna go with dumb looking enemies. It's the reason I stopped playing DQ8. Played the DQ Heroes 2 Japanese demo which was excellent but, by god, those are some dumb looking enemies. Googly eye executioners were just bad.

Wow. I think DQ has the best monster designs in all of gaming. They're super varied, and range from adorable to ferocious. I think it's telling that the only really memorable FF monsters are cactuars, moogles, and chocobos, whereas DQ has so many fan favorites. Your opinion just baffles me. I would think as an Adventure Time fan you'd like varied, whimsical designs. Guess I'm way off.

Damn this thread depresses me.

 

[GreenMonkey]

SNES rpgs were niche, but they sold well enough. Squaresoft made a tv advert for FF6. They also made an rpg developed by a NA studio, Secret of Evermore. FF7 reached high sales levels is because of good word of mouth about FF6. Squaresoft abandoning Nintendo was big news back then.

Yeah. It's not really about the sales (DQ in its current style would never be a huge market like FF7 created). It's just about keeping forward momentum.

I just feel like a strong SNES game here in the U.S. would have helped keep the ball rolling, so to speak.
Kept them a little less obscure at least.

I mean, they skipped an entire console generation. Almost 2 generations, since DQ7 pretty much came out in the PS2 era (I played the game on PS2).

That had to hurt the momentum when the games started coming out again for handhelds.

 

[YAWN]

It pains me Dragon Quest isn't as popular in the west. It has so much charm. So, so much charm. In a world where most JRPGs are full of melodramatic, angst ridden teens, I'm happy this series had balding old geezers with mustaches playable. I understand the traditional system is a turn off to many, but they are remedying it in a way that keeps the core intact but makes it less of a grind with the newly added speed feature in VIII and visible enemies on the world map.

Hopefully DQXI turns things around. The titles with big marketing pushes fair well, such as VIII and IX. I only expect XI to recieve some sort of decent marketing due to its PS4 and Switch presence, as they'll likely sell the least among the Japanese audience, their main target.

Having a DQ rep in Smash Bros would really help imo, and it doesn't seem like a hard thing to do. Im hoping the Swicth presentation has some nice surprises for us. They shouldn't focus on FF sales numbers, just get it up to Tales' level and they should be alright.

 

[Manmademan]

SNES rpgs were niche, but they sold well enough.

no, they didn't- which is why so many JRPGs were left untranslated in Japan. Several of these being sequels to games that were released here and didn't sell (FF5, SD3, Tactics Ogre, Lennus 2, Mystic Ark, Terranigma) It Wasn't worth the effort to make the copies to release them here.

For the record (I did some poking around)

Final Fantasy 5
Live A Live
Star Ocean
Seiken Densetsu 3
Tales of Phantasia
Elfaria II
Dragonquest IIIr,
Dragon Quest V
Dragon Quest VI
FEDA:The Emblem of Justice -
Treasure Hunter G
Tactics Ogre
Rudra
Shin megami Tensei
Shn Megami Tensei 2
Terranigma
Mystic Arc (7th Saga 2)
Lennus 2 (Paladin's Quest 2)
Bahamut Lagoon

There are some pretty heavy hitters on this list- I'm omitting a ton I've never heard of as well as random gundam or anime related stuff that never would have made it over for licensing reasons. and once again, some of the games that DID make it over here (Ogre Battle) had absurdly low print runs. Edit: And the US version of 7th saga had a low print run AND a nasty unfixed bug that made the game impossibly hard.

Squaresoft made a tv advert for FF6.

Edit: This one? Lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d15qmRzn2Pc

This isn't saying much. There were TV ads for sega just to shit on the "cream spinach color" of the gameboy. Comix Zone had ads, Toe Jam and Earl had ads. Syndicated television programming for kids being a thing in the mid 90s, TV ad time could be had pretty cheaply. What you DO with the ad matters, and there was nothing on the scale of the ff7 ad campaign- nor would there be, since Square only made a couple hundred thousand copies of FF6, and reprinting cartridges was something that almost never happened, due to the realities of how the console cartridge business worked. FF6 was never intended to sell well here.

They also made an rpg developed by a NA studio, Secret of Evermore.

Yeah, about that. Secret of Evermore was another victim of strange thinking by Square Enix that americans wont buy japanese games, so we'll make a dumbed down RPG just for them.

This happened with the crippled version of FFIV, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (Called Final Fantasy USA in Jp), and Secret of Evermore. It didn't work well any time they tried it.

FF7 reached high sales levels is because of good word of mouth about FF6. Squaresoft abandoning Nintendo was big news back then.

complete BS. FF7 sold nearly ten times what ff6 did in the US. Most of the people who picked that game up had never touched an RPG in their lives. Squaresoft abandoning nintendo was only interesting to people that lived and died by gaming magazines- the wider market had no idea.

 

[Meffer]

I'm still gunna go with dumb looking enemies. It's the reason I stopped playing DQ8. Played the DQ Heroes 2 Japanese demo which was excellent but, by god, those are some dumb looking enemies. Googly eye executioners were just bad.

I love the enemy designs.

 

[Faustek]

complete BS. FF7 sold about five times what ff6 did in the US. Most of the people who picked that game up had never touched an RPG in their lives. Squaresoft abandoning nintendo was only interesting to people that lived and died by gaming magazines- the wider market had no idea.

Oh man I remember the first PS Mag I bought and the extremely nasty look I got from a few friends. They where Sega folks, I was a PC gamer mostly back then but thanks to both my dad and mom playing games we actually had md/snes and other stuff in the house.

C64 still being the best thing ever <3

 

[kswiston]

complete BS. FF7 sold nearly ten times what ff6 did in the US. Most of the people who picked that game up had never touched an RPG in their lives. Squaresoft abandoning nintendo was only interesting to people that lived and died by gaming magazines- the wider market had no idea.

Ya. That's sort of like suggesting that Grand Theft Auto 3 sold on the strong WOM from GTA 1 and 2.

 

[NolbertoS]

No one was playing JRPGs on the SNES. Someone with numbers can clarify things, but I think that Super Mario RPG was the only SNES JRPG to break 500k in the west. You can see numbers for the Square stuff.

I don't have the numbers, but from my personal experience in the SNES era JRPGs mostly sold between 100-300K or less, depending on the series. I remember asking my local EB which JRPG were hits and most selling was FFIV, VI, BOF, and FF Mystic Quest surprisingly. I remember the Gamepro Magazine showing DQV coming West sxreenshots and then Enix disappeared that entire generation, to only appear after the success of FFVII

 

[kswiston]

I don't have the numbers, but from my personal experience in the SNES era JRPGs mostly sold between 100-300K or less, depending on the series. I remember asking my local EB which JRPG were hits and most selling was FFIV, VI, BOF, and FF Mystic Quest surprisingly. I remember the Gamepro Magazine showing DQV coming West sxreenshots and then Enix disappeared that entire generation, to only appear after the success of FFVII

The "JRPGs are dead" era from ~2009 to present actually has the most million sellers in the west. JRPGs just seem dead outside of Pokemon because you have stuff from Bethesda, Bioware, and CDPR moving 5-30M a game.

 

[Aeana]

The "JRPGs are dead" era from ~2009 to present actually has the most million sellers in the west. JRPGs just seem dead outside of Pokemon because you have stuff from Bethesda, Bioware, and CDPR moving 5-30M a game.

Well, the other part is that you have fewer individual Japanese RPGs being released. Most Japanese publishers had at least one RPG series in their stable, but now the mid-range Japanese RPG is all but extinct.

 

[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

I'm in my thirties and the cartoony look really gets my interest. Of course, I I'm an older gamer who grew up with cartoony looking games and I never turned on them. Personally, I think there should be a crusade against the anti kiddie sentiment in gaming. I think it has ruined Nintendo and has a negative ripple effect across the industry. Thankfully, the indie scene has pushed back against that.

 

[Manmademan]

I don't have the numbers, but from my personal experience in the SNES era JRPGs mostly sold between 100-300K or less, depending on the series. I remember asking my local EB which JRPG were hits and most selling was FFIV, VI, BOF, and FF Mystic Quest surprisingly. I remember the Gamepro Magazine showing DQV coming West sxreenshots and then Enix disappeared that entire generation, to only appear after the success of FFVII

The numbers of the SNES era square stuff is actually earlier in the thread. I missed it myself somehow.

This is...pretty awful, actually.

Mystic Quest outselling secret of Mana and only 6K below Chrono Trigger is WTF worthy. Though if I remember correctly that title had a really, really low budget price at launch.

edit: yep. Most other RPGs were about double that price.

 

[kswiston]

Well, the other part is that you have fewer individual Japanese RPGs being released. Most Japanese publishers had at least one RPG series in their stable, but now the mid-range Japanese RPG is all but extinct.

We still have Namco, Square Enix, Level-5, and Nintendo putting out that stuff, unless your cut off for mid-range is lower than Tales or Bravely Default.

Capcom, Konami, Sega, and Sony do seem to be content to focus on other business opportunities though.

 

[Lynx_7]

I doubt it would have made much of a difference.

No one was playing JRPGs on the SNES. Someone with numbers can clarify things, but I think that Super Mario RPG was the only SNES JRPG to break 500k in the west. You can see numbers for the Square stuff.

While that is definitely true, I don't think raw numbers tell the whole story in this case. DQ 5 and 6 wouldn't have made much of a difference for DQ 7, but they could've helped with long therm brand recognition. Despite not being big sellers back then, word of mouth and emulation helped boost the popularity of JRPGs from that era, so having english releases for 5 and 6 could've helped in building a reputation and something for SE to capitalize on.
I also think they should've kept the "Dragon Warrior" brand in the west tbh, I still see people now and then who have no idea Dragon Quest is supposed to be the same franchise.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

As long as it's not enough for them, we're going to keep seeing this behavior repeat.

Monster Hunter is a really great example of what happens when a company realizes that it needs to work on growing the audience in an organic manner, rather than expecting that it's going to be just as big as it is in Japan and pouting when it does not. Once Capcom shifted their expectations to something more realistic, the releases have been much more consistent and they've been celebrating each and every bit of growth that they've been getting in the west.

Yeah, I can't help but feel like what Capcom is doing with MH now is the exact model that SE should be using for DQ. Concentrate on slow and steady growth instead of expecting a GTA3/FF7/The Witcher 3/Skyrim moment where the series explodes with a single entry.

It's a shame the DS remakes weren't a bit more aesthetically pleasing. They could have served as a bit better growth potential if they looked a bit more comparable to DQ9.

DQ8 was one of the bigger PS2 jrpgs in the west. It wasn't Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts, but nothing else was either.

Yep. Namco was doing cartwheels over Xenosaga Episode 1 doing a few hundred thousand in the west.

 

[RedSwirl]

The numbers of the SNES era square stuff is actually earlier in the thread. I missed it myself somehow.

This is...pretty awful, actually.

Mystic Quest outselling secret of Mana and only 6K below Chrono Trigger is WTF worthy. Though if I remember correctly that title had a really, really low budget price at launch.

edit: yep. Most other RPGs were about double that price.

If this chart is legit (what's the source?) then it illustrates what I've always thought was the case with JRPGs on consoles in North America: that basically everything outside Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Pokemon was niche. Those are basically the only three mainstream JRPGs in the west. Dark Souls is probably more than niche at this point but still ain't on the same level as the aforementioned franchise.

I have to say that even though I didn't play JRPGs back in the SNES days, I did notice that they tended to get more notoriety in the SNES scene than their actual sales suggest, though maybe that was mostly FF and Nintendo RPGs like Mario RPG and Earthbound. I think it can be argued that on the SNES in North America FF IV and VI might have laid a bit of the groundwork for VII.

But I think the perception of RPGs and cartoonish characters (that weren't Nintendo icons) in the west is a major factor in how RPGs in the console market developed in the west. FFVII made a big impression because it had a massive marketing campaign and didn't look like typical fantasy nerd stuff. It was probably the first game that made RPGs sexy to the more mainstream western console audience. Kingdom Hearts jumped off that FF popularity and added Disney characters. Pokemon is Pokemon. Outside those games, the first RPG I saw really get Joe American Console Gamer pay attention to was Oblivion, and maybe to a lesser extent KOTOR a few years earlier. RPGs didn't get really big on consoles in the west until western developers started bringing them there.

Dragon Ball Z is a big deal here, but really only for kids or people who watched it as kids. In the interview in the OP that guy said there are 50-year-olds playing Dragon Quest. With a big marketing campaign, I think the best DQ could do over here is to become a major franchise with kids, like a lesser Pokemon.

 

[Cheerilee]

They didn't have much of a choice with DQ3-4. Enix brought the first game to North America over 3 years after the Japanese release. We got 4 of them in 3 years. DW3 and 4 sold terribly, so they didn't bother with 5-6.

DW3&4 didn't bomb, Enix of America published them in conservative numbers and they sold out. There was a whole generation of RPGs on the SNES that regularly sold half of what DW3&4 did.

That's not totally accurate. A major reason why the Super Famicom DQ games never made it West was technical.

An English translation requires more memory than the original Japanese, and localizing DQV would have required them to use larger, more expensive ROM chips for the carts than they had used in Japan. With DQVI the script was so large that even the Japanese version was already filling up the largest 32Mb cart the Super Famicom had available, so there was literally no way to put an English version on an SNES cart.

DQ5 had some sort of programming trickery that was based in Enix of Japan's total disregard for the need to translate Dragon Quest. Fan-translators bumped into it and said it was one of the most technically-difficult games on the SNES to fan-translate. Enix of America wanted to bring it over, and their solution to the programming trouble was "money", but Enix of Japan overrode Enix of America's decision on that, and told them not to waste their money on foolish things like the success of Dragon Quest in America.

Enix of America was then going to bring over Dragon Quest 6 (as Dragon Warrior 5), and it was completely translated and ready to go, but Enix of Japan abruptly shut down Enix of America, because Enix of Japan wanted to "ponder" their relationship with Nintendo.

Enix of Japan is Dragon Quest in America's worst enemy. After Final Fantasy 7, and a generation of neglecting American audiences, Enix of Japan expected Dragon Warrior 7 to sell 2 million units in America. Just take a look at the top selling PSX RPGs in America. FF7 = 2.75 million. FF8 = 2.1 million. FF9 = 1.5 million. That's where Enix of America thinks Dragon Quest deserves to be (ignoring the reality of where every other PSX RPG stands). When DW7 sold a mere 200,000, Enix of Japan cancelled the Dragon Warrior 4 remake that Enix of America had already been advertising by shutting down the company again.

Dragon Quest 8 was the most popular DQ game in America/Europe to-date, but the producer in the OP dismissed that as "Some modest sales. It's no Final Fantasy." Enix of Japan doesn't give a damn about building Dragon Quest in America. If they don't score a home run, they take their ball and go home. Enix of Japan pondering how to make the series a success in America means that they're pondering their next home run attempt, and when that attempt fails they're going to abandon America like they always do.

 

[CrichtonKicks]

I have to say that even though I didn't play JRPGs back in the SNES days, I did notice that they tended to get more notoriety in the SNES scene than their actual sales suggest, though maybe that was mostly FF and Nintendo RPGs like Mario RPG and Earthbound. I think it can be argued that on the SNES in North America FF IV and VI might have laid a bit of the groundwork for VII.

I think it depended on what circles you traveled in. I never had an SNES on initial release (was a PC only gamer from '93-'01), but I constantly heard about FF2,4, and Chrono Trigger from friends.

 

[Man God]

DQ V would have bombed. Early Enix SNES games were super late and had rough localizations and DQ V isn't exactly a great looking game on the SNES, looking roughly similar if not a bit worse than FF IV, a game that already looks like an upgraded NES game.

DQ VI might have done pretty well. It's one of the ten best looking SNES games. I'm so mad that it and Tactics Ogre got canned.

 

[The_Endgamer]

Dragon Quest just needs a successful anime to relaunch the series and have a more flowing battle system more in line with some of the more recent JRPGs.

Think how the Yokai Watch anime set the ground work for the games. Similar tactic for world building.

 

[Glitter and Gold]

In regards to that chart, what was considered "successful" 20 years ago?

I think a lot of JRPG fans aren't aware of what "normal" looks like for sales in the genre in the west. FF, KH and Pokémon are not "normal" at all.

Yeah that's what I'm trying to get a frame of reference for. People seem to be drawing the conclusion that Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts are the baselines for success in the West. Not the exceptions.

 

[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

Dragon Quest just needs a successful anime to relaunch the series and have a more flowing battle system more in line with some of the more recent JRPGs.

Think how the Yokai Watch anime set the ground work for the games. Similar tactic for world building.

I would definitely watch that.

 

[kromeo]

All those great games selling a fraction of Kingdom Hearts

 

[Glitter and Gold]

I don't think an anime series is the gateway to success in the West

 

[kswiston]

In regards to that chart, what was considered "successful" 20 years ago?

In general or for the genre?

Square2015 has some historical NPD charts. I guess you could look at those for a rough idea

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1230889

 

[RedSwirl]

edit: colors off, sorry


Graph data up-to-date to about 2007, scattered data after; PSX era may have been revived upward by NPD (ZhugeEZ's NPD data seemed to indicate such).
NA Ship:

Dragon Warrior	        500,000 
Dragon Warrior II	150,000
Dragon Warrior III	95,000
Dragon Warrior IV	80,000

Final Fantasy	         770,000 
Final Fantasy II	 330,000 
FF Mystic Quest	         250,000

NPD thenceforth:

Final Fantasy III	 397,491

Final Fantasy VII	2,753,895

The first two are based on $ sales:

Dragon Warrior Monsters	 240,000 
Dragon Warrior I&II	 175,000 
Dragon Warrior III	 180,000 
DWM2: Cobi / Tara	 200,000

Dragon Warrior VII	 190,606

ZhugeEX has DQ7 at 215k

From ZhugeEX:

Dragon Quest VIII	590,000
Dragon Quest IX	       >500,000

So you just gathered this chart from your own (and Zhuge's) data right?

 

[ubercheez]

DQ5 had some sort of programming trickery that was based in Enix of Japan's total disregard for the need to translate Dragon Quest. Fan-translators bumped into it and said it was one of the most technically-difficult games on the SNES to fan-translate. Enix of America wanted to bring it over, and their solution to the programming trouble was "money", but Enix of Japan overrode Enix of America's decision on that, and told them not to waste their money on foolish things like the success of Dragon Quest in America.

Enix of America was then going to bring over Dragon Quest 6 (as Dragon Warrior 5), and it was completely translated and ready to go, but Enix of Japan abruptly shut down Enix of America, because Enix of Japan wanted to "ponder" their relationship with Nintendo.

Enix of Japan is Dragon Quest in America's worst enemy. After Final Fantasy 7, and a generation of neglecting American audiences, Enix of Japan expected Dragon Warrior 7 to sell 2 million units in America. Just take a look at the top selling PSX RPGs in America. FF7 = 2.75 million. FF8 = 2.1 million. FF9 = 1.5 million. That's where Enix of America thinks Dragon Quest deserves to be (ignoring the reality of where every other PSX RPG stands). When DW7 sold a mere 200,000, Enix of Japan cancelled the Dragon Warrior 4 remake that Enix of America had already been advertising by shutting down the company again.

Dragon Quest 8 was the most popular DQ game in America/Europe to-date, but the producer in the OP dismissed that as "Some modest sales. It's no Final Fantasy." Enix of Japan doesn't give a damn about building Dragon Quest in America. If they don't score a home run, they take their ball and go home. Enix of Japan pondering how to make the series a success in America means that they're pondering their next home run attempt, and when that attempt fails they're going to abandon America like they always do.

As somebody whose reaction to the Squaresoft/Enix merger was "Who's Enix?", this was really interesting. Thanks!

Expecting instantaneous sales on par with FF7... jeez.

 

[Pejo]

It's funny, I absolutely love turn based JRPGs, and I hear DQ is the creme de la creme, but I just cannot get past the character designs. I think it's the same guy that does DBZ that makes them, which I don't mind for the cartoon. For whatever reason though, I just can't stand it full time in a game. That's also ultimately why I put down Blue Dragon and never picked it back up. Something about that artstyle.

Also weird, I loved Chrono Trigger - though the sprites don't look DBZ-ish, and I love early NES Dragon Quest games. But man that artstyle just kills me for anything that isn't DBZ.

 

[Megalosaro]

I'd rather they stop making DQ games rather them get ride of elements that give the serise is personality (WhimsiCal Toriyama designs, sugiyama music, horii's touch) in a misguided attempt to woo western audiences

 

[saichi]

I wonder if SE can explain the popularity gap between DQ and FF in Japan

 

[Megalosaro]

I wonder if SE can explain the popularity gap between DQ and FF in Japan

I'm really curious to see how dq11 does compared to ffxv.

Dqx sold like 600k out of the gate, which seems low, but it was the highest selling mmo there. It also sold through 90% of its shipment

 

[PixyJunket]

Why does it have to be as popular as Final Fantasy or as popular as it is in Japan?

Just localize the games, support them on release and let them do what they do.

Surely that's not an insane request considering the sheer amount of trash-tier anime RPGs that get released nowadays that probably sell a fraction of what Dragon Quest does.

God, I utterly despise the "AAA" game industry; please die out already.