We touched upon this piece in yesterday’s podcast, which you can check out in the right sidebar. As you may have heard a few days back, Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada threw a fast one on us when he put the words “Dragon Quest IX”, “Overseas”, and “Considering” in the same sentence. This comes after last year’s Dragon Quest X’s announcement for the Wii, when Mr. Wada and Mr. Iwata strongly wanted Dragon Quest to be a global household name…even hinting at an alliance in the near future. That practically ensured Dragon Quest IX’s international release. So what has changed between then and now? Nothing, in my opinion.

Perhaps the recent Q&A had poor choice of words (one word in this situation) or a translation mishap, the latter of which happens occasionally. But it scares the heck out of us when various news outlets use quotation marks to highlight “considering”. I mean, Dragon Quest VIII has been a massive success outside of Japan, selling extremely well in Europe even thanks to Ubisoft’s publishing duties. Remakes of Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI are being released internationally…so why stop trying with DQIX all of a sudden? One theory is that US sales of DQ IV and V weren’t that massive (around 120000 and 60000 respectively) which in turn has made Square-Enix skeptical. Honestly though, what’s the use of having an ambition without trying? Final Fantasy did not become an instant international million-seller overnight. Squaresoft tried back then, unlike Enix which limited and cut-off North American support multiple times with no European branches.

In short, Dragon Quest IX has sold 3.5 million copies in Japan and counting. The game practically paid for itself and then some considering the lower handheld budget compared to its prequel. So Square-Enix, stop being pansies and announce DQIX localization plans already! One thing’s for sure; at least we have a set date; not before April 2010.

Source: Siliconera