The latest installment in Japan’s beloved Dragon Quest series broke sales records in its “first week” on shelves – and by first week, we mean two days.
It’s nice to see that even in this crazy, mixed-up world we live in, some things never change. The sun will always rise in the morning, parents will never understand whatever their kids are interested in, and Japan will always love handheld game platforms, tentacle porn, and Dragon Quest. So it stands to reason that a combination of two of the above would sell like proverbial hotcakes, no?
Last weekend, Dragon Quest IX was released on the Nintendo DS, and two independent analyst firms have released “first week” sales figures of 2,343,440 and 2,318,932, respectively. Now, bear in mind that DQ9‘s “first week” was actually just Saturday and Sunday, so the game actually sold over 2.3 million copies in just two days.
While not enough to take on the reigning Western champions – Halo 3 for consoles and Wrath of the Lich King for PC – DQ9‘s impressive sales were enough to mark it as the fastest-selling game in Japanese history. Of course, the US has just under three times the population of Japan, so on a per capita basis, one could actually argue it as a more popular game. Naturally, the title it bumped to #2 was… (drumroll, please) …Dragon Quest VIII!
Dragon Quest X is currently in development for the Wii, so I’m going to go ahead and make the wild and unfounded prediction that it’s going to probably do pretty well for itself in sales, too.
(Joystiq)
