Dragon Quest IX Release Total Fiasco
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Jul 13, 2009 07:01 JST
- Tags: 2ch, Amazon, Dragon Quest, DS, Otaku, Production Controversy, RPG
The most eagerly awaited blockbuster RPG for some, Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito (Guardian of the Starry Skies), for the DS, was recently released, but instead of the usual rapturous reaction its release has turned into a major fiasco, with piracy, negative reactions and dubious characters all spoiling what was doubtless expected to be the biggest DS release for some time, though it is not clear whether sales are affected by this.
The first upset to strike the game, if we exclude some dubious rumours about major misconduct in the design team, was it being leaked to warez groups several days ahead of the official release, not an uncommon occurrence, but one which with a title of this magnitude filtered into the mass media and was a cause of some discontentment.
Dragon Quest games are known to include additional non-standard copy protection to thwart this sort of casual piracy (checks which stop people advancing at certain points in the game), but unfortunately for them their efforts were cracked within a day.
Then came a wave of critical Amazon reviews, with the store’s customer review system totally dominated by harshly critical voices:
A two and a half star average was topped off by virtually every single positive review being marked “unhelpful”, and the converse true of negative reviews.
Soon the 2ch reaction became apparent, and it was pitiful in comparison to the sort of hysterical reaction Final Fantasy incited, with only a few threads:
Many fans have also been rather sceptical of the addition of “Sandy”, a ganguro fairy, to the cast of characters. She was supposed to be a cheeky streetwise fairy speaking in the slang of the ganguro subculture, but she has instead been received as an egocentric annoyance…
There has been some positive attention directed towards the game (for example towards its character designer, which is apparently well suited to loli design), but this rather painful release seems to have completely overshadowed that, with reports all zeroing in on the juicy controversy rather than the game itself…
The enthusiasm of some fans was undampened, such as that of mystery dakimakura man here:
Those wishing to find out for themselves about the highs and lows of what will still probably become a major blockbuster of the sort Nintendo seems adept at releasing can order the game now.
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So, since when do normal people care about fucking amazon reviews which are always trash?
They look nothing like Dragon Quest "heroes"
But I still love them <3
Nice game promoting girls there...
The character creation in this game is great. I'm a huge sucker for creating and customizing my own people, and it's nice to see DQ giving me this chance once more. 3 is my favorite and this is looking like a runner-up at least already. It's quality, people.
Strange lighting or patchwork cleavage?
Cindry-chan!!!!
The dakimakura guy win follow by Last pic,as for the game waiting for the english release and try it myself
Getting 40/40 from Famitsu and selling over 2 Million copies in 2 days = Total Fiasco, so this is 1997-2007 all over again, Artefact.
Just stop writing the most irritating and polemic headlines ever, then people will stop bugging you about it.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175125
1up preview.
Looking brilliant, I must say.
looks like the same dragon quest shit to me
this fucking boring franchise hasn't evolved in 23 years
Whatever you say, troll. I'll enjoy my
quality RPG.
I guess you laughed at Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, even though with it's lack of evolution it was quality.
I'm here just to see that K-on DQ cosplay pic and the mysterious Sadoki dakimakura guy..
Go ahead and play your games, I'll enjoy the awsome exclusives Playstation has.
Oh, and if you don't like Artefact's bias attitude toward Sony, you can always go somewhere else. You're not obligated to view this site.
>I'll enjoy the awsome exclusives Playstation has
Oh lol
What has that got to do with this article?
All the consoles have exclusives, but if we're coming to handhelds, enjoy your dead platform (PSP), which is struggling to sell in the UK, for example (second biggest game's market, larger than Japan's).
Nintendo has real exclusives, Xbox to a lesser degree, Sony? They are all third party and we know how exclusive those types of "exclusives" are.
No more console fanboyism - this article is concerned solely with the curious reaction to DQ9. There is a time and a place, and it will be in the next Vesperia article.
At least come up with something funny anon.
Can't wait for that article Artefact.
i sense an ip ban, what a noob. take it somewhere else.
Wow Artefact. You are a fuck...who dicks around with asses and makes an ass out of yourself, fucking dicks. And you suck also.
Maybe I am missing the mark with your dry sense of humour, but I chuckled at "next Vesperia article"
I'm sure it must be a great game, however
I, for one, cannot take any game seriously if the characters looked like that.
last pic, nice zoom
I'm not sure really, none of this will have contributed to the launch being a failure at all, for example GTA Chinatown Wars on DS was leaked before its launch and GTA IV, both big games, yet its launch was not effected.
Reviews for Spore were low due to the DRM, yet you can't say the launch was a fiasco either.
The reaction is negative, the sales and game itself may be good.
1997-2007
Of course, but it is difficult to tell whether the reviews are genuine or not, which, going by what happened with Spore, seems to not be the case. It wouldn't dampen the reaction at all in my opinion, Spore was well received despite all the unreliable reviews.
Besides, after reading some of the reviews (translated on kotaku, I think) myself, they are utter rubbish, it is clear the game is a brilliantly polished game on the DS and a great entry to the series, yet people complain about cutscenes, cutscenes which are by far some of the best I've seen on the system for example, and after playing tens of DS games my expectations are high and it looks the part.
Sorry, I think the true reporting of the DQIX launch will stay with kotaku, thankyouverymuch.
http://kotaku.com/5312366/you-too-can-experience-the-dragon-quest-ix-launch
While I enjoy Kotaku, it has just as much an Anti-Sony bias as this site has a Pro-Sony bias.
http://kotaku.com/5307410/valve-ps3-orange-box-players-got-the-stepchild-version
If you read the actual statements from Valve, they state that they are actively searching for PS3 developers. If you only read Kotaku, though, you'd be left with their closing statement:
"Translated, what it really means is there is no one inside Valve with any interest in PS3 development, and the company on the whole isn't interested in outsourcing any more ports after the experience with The Orange Box on PS3, which suffered some bad load times and framerate issues."
Yeah - they aren't pushing an agenda at all.
That's nothing in comparison to Kotaku's daily anti-Nintendo bias. Every single time they have to do a report on a Nintendo game, they'll always add something negative.
When it's a "hardcore" Nintendo DS game, they always try to make it sound like only kids play on the hand-held, and claim it could have been 100X better on the Sony PSP. They even want to compare the sales of the GTA: Chinatown Wars game that's going to be remade on the PSP with different graphics and controls. How is that even fair or possible to compare when it's pretty much considered as an entirely different game?
When a "hardcore" game is being released on the Nintendo Wii, they always complain about the graphics and the online capabilities. Also they pretty much always point out the low "hardcore" sales on the Wii, even though the console was admittedly targeting casual players in the first place. Few months/years ago, they kept complaining there aren't any "hardcore" games coming to the Wii, but now there are some coming they're complaining that the games should have been on the x360 or the PS3 instead of the Wii. They can't have it both ways.
Furthermore on the Wii, when there's an announcement of a port or a game being remade for it, they always childishly tack on a screenshot of the original game with a mosaic overlay, which created a blocky image to make fun of the Wii's graphics, even though it's an old PS2 game being remade which had lesser quality graphics in comparison. Sometimes they even pick the worst screenshot possible as the title image for their article from a new game as well.
I'm not surprised if the entire staff there is running an anti-Japan campaign as well. Since they always make fun of Japanese and try to make everyone there sound like perverts. Especially when the Dream C Club game was announced for the x360 or Idolm@ster, realistically those games just caters to a certain demographic only. It even gets worse when they talk about erogames on their site. They really lash out against the Japanese when they make an article about those.
Actually, while Kotaku don't post actual game reviews that often, I think they tend to be pretty balanced.
Most of the bias flourishing on Kotaku stems from the comments anyway.
Thank God for Zero Punctuation, then, at least Yahtzee does it the funny way and (lo and behold) he always makes a serious argument before he crucifies a game :)
Zero Punctuation? That's awful, he gets paid to "slag off" games and completely misses the point that a review shouldn't be so opinionated.
But if you take the reviews with a pinch of salt, not too seriously and as a laugh it's good entertainment.
The AVGN is more of nostalgia and to "educate", on the other hand.
"Actually, while Kotaku don’t post actual game reviews that often, I think they tend to be pretty balanced.
Most of the bias flourishing on Kotaku stems from the comments anyway."
No, they're extremely biased, try to look at some Nintendo Wii articles by Luke Plunkett. You'll see his utter disdain towards the console, most of the time he'll add something negative about a game or the console when it's for the Wii. Sometimes he starts off praising a game if it's interesting to him, but he'll always attack the developer for choosing the Wii as the platform for the game. Even a large number of users have noticed this and commented about his bias regularly.
@kamanashi:
That's a completely confusing statement to make concerning a site that's supposed to be producing reviews.
By hating everything, then they're going to produce nothing but personal unrealistically biased articles, which creates more confusion and more trolls due to flame baiting comments by the childish writer. Not to mention you would be unsure if they're actually serious about their reviews because of their bias, since there's a possibility the game could be something more to your taste, but due to their own personal reasons they take it down with ridiculous comments that are completely false. Can you truthfully judge a game with that type of view? Realistically it's just creating nothing but confusion for you, since you could have liked the game a lot, but you decided not to purchase the game due to a biased review by Kotaku writers.
Let's say you were planning to buy a game that you've been looking forward to for months/years, your friends have purchased it and loved it, and other review sites loved it. But you don't know if Kotaku hates the console or the developer for the game, and they are the only one who hated the game and even pointed out why they hate it, even though some of those points seems odd. Would you still buy the game or would you listen to Kotaku's biased opinions of the game?
That's why I like Kotaku. They hate everything.
Yeah. I never followed Kotaku because of that. It was so obvious in just the first few articles I read.
Sometimes I think Kotaku is just anti-everything. They can't let anything good get away without making a cruel joke at the console it's on (since EVERY console has its issues), or jab at the franchise (since apparently everything is overdone now), or just bitch about a tiny detail and blow it out of proportion.
Kotaku can't seem to let anyone enjoy anything.
We're reporting on the (online) reaction to the launch. Nobody cares about about some silly conference hall drama.
To be honest as a gamer, I don't care about the online reaction at all to the launch, all I care about are the reviews and sales figures (and not unreliable poorly scored Famitsu reviews at that)
Kotaku is garbage news, even worse than this weaboo news. Its for the white naruto kids. Please die.
Hahaha, more funny trolling.
I have no idea what kotaku news is, why anon do you seem so familiar with it?
Yes anon knows fail quite well...
Anon knows all fail. And Kotaku is no exception.
kotaku.com
It's a gaming news blog.
It's decent and I don't know of any other sites that are so much better.
can anyone explain what kotaku is though? it has peaked my curiosity.
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free,
YOU ARE A PIRATE!
SOMALIAN PIRATES WE!
Some lucky bastard has that saki and Nodoka dakimakura.
Hes the real news article here!
I won't bother reading the article.
K-on girls and oppai pics are enough
*CTRL+F4*
I believe it is Alt+F4
[ctrl+w] works 2
Then you are wrong. Mozilla Firefox can be closed by "Ctrl + F4". Thx for your fail ^^
Yea, me wants one too!!
Me three :3
me five?
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
this is ...... dement pervet
me 4
THIS IS MADNESS!
(wait for it, wait for it!)
no.. no sparta for you!! xP
He's the writer of the official Saki anime blog.
Saki has links with Square Enix so he's there to plug Saki as well.
Source: Canned Dogs.
And by reviews I meant the amazon ones, to clear that up. Excuse the extra post.
So Artefact did you get the game?
... looks like he did. (´∀`)
Artefact has a nice chest >.<
WAT? O_o
I LOVE K-ON!!!!
You're both sad and gay.
=D
Awesome Saki X Nodoka dakimakura we have here.
You can get it for free when you order Saki v2 LE
http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B0026C61NK/ref=ox_ya_oh_product
The launch was a massive success. Using the words "total fiasco" to describe it is beyond stupid.
If it was a massive success the issues mentioned would not have occurred. There are also some very suspect issues with the development process...
I don't find the sales figures more interesting. I find them more RELIABLE. In fact, the sales numbers are now official. DQ9 sold 2.34 million copies in just two DAYS. And DQ8 for the ps2 sold 2.23 million copies in its first WEEK.
"Total fiasco" my ass.
You're missing the point here.
You've at least once in your life bought a game you later found shitty.
Millions of copies may have been sold, but how many people actually LIKE the game?
Sales numbers don't count, reviews do.
True. A game's not successful if people don't like it, even if it's sold millions.
Of course, Nintendo only looks at sales and says it's successful..
But again, Spore was a massive success even with the poor reviews on amazon when it launched insulting its DRM (getting tonnes of 1 star reviews). Here the issues pointed out on the "unreliable" reviews can't be trusted from the reviews I've read, it's mere "trolling" of the game. I'd wait for some proper reviews.
It's definitely going to be a quality game from what I've heard from people who have been playing it, not only does it impress from a technical level, but it seems very polished. Not only that, but it has been in development for a long time, as Miyamoto said a delayed game is eventually good.
Quality games like Chinatown Wars weren't a massive success because their sales figures weren't massive upon release, despite them being quality games, for example.
Except the issues mentioned are barely worth mentioning. It's even rumored that the game has broken the day 1 sales record. If that's not a massive success, then I don't know what the hell is.
I do, but I seem to find your reporting slightly on the distasteful side sometimes, especially when most of the "evidence" used is not reliable at all. It all seems to be pulled out of the hat.
This article was better though, at least it stated all the things that were happening, though in the end it was used to support its title, which isn't the case of the launch at all, so it's misleading.
It is a step up from the Black Wii looking like PS2 article, which was dire.
Excuse my criticism, but I feel as a gamer I deserve better.
Go and stare at your sales figures then, if you find that more interesting.
I think the black Wii article was tongue and cheek and not meant to be taken seriously.
LOL
http://www.gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=89033
Fiasco?!? o_O
Nobody said it will not sell. And there is the issue of the production rumours all turning out to be true...
I think the delays were because the original game shown in late 2007 vupset a few Dragon Quest purists with its real time coop action.
Many great games have been delayed, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time (multiple times), all turned out to be excellent.
"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever" - Shigeru Miyamoto
I must stress, Square-Enix know what they are doing with this, it's a proper Dragon Quest title for once, not a spin-off and it's being developed in-house.
And by in-house I mean Level 5, who did an excellent job with VIII.
That should be late 2006, by the way. Didn't realise it was that long ago.
CLEAVAGE.
I like the last pic, The Nintendo game and her "D's".
*wink wink... nom*
Op pic sucks, here have a better one http://chan.sankakucomplex.com/post/show/493762/animated_gif-azusa-k-on-ritsu-sex-yui-yuri
OP pic is good because it's related to DQ.
Dragon quest is fucking shit, no one outside of japan gives a fuck about it. DQ8 was so crap they had to include a ff12 demo just to sell the fucking thing in the west.
Can you (square) just hurry up and release ff13 already, we're sick of waiting. FF is all that matters as far as square is conceredn, fuck DQ.
die stupid motherfucker
Not really. Dragon Quest V on DS has sold pretty well in the west, and Dragon Quest VIII (the first in Europe) has done well, leading to more titles (the DS ones) being released and localised.
Not to mention the western version became superior with an orchestral soundtrack, improved menus and an excellent localisation job and british voice acting.
The Dragon Quest games are some of the best, most polished and lavish traditional RPGs you can get.
dragon quest 8 flopped in europe, it was a sales disaster.
Sorry but you're talking bullshit
I really doubt it. I've had enough of this site with commenters lie you making things up.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105347
"Europe: Dragon Quest VIII over 600.000 times sells
10.06.06 - Square Enix communicates that the game of roles Dragon Quest: Journey OF the Cursed King in Europe over 600.000 times was sold. The play came to 13.04.06 on the market."
means it flopped in Europe. Please do your research before making things up. 600,000 is a huge success for a J-RPG in Europe.
Not to mention compare it to quality titles like Little King's Story on Wii which struggles to sell more than 20,000.
get ready to wait a few months inbetween FF13 Japanese release and English release
Or year(s)...
Fiasco, eh? With ~2,8 million sales on the 1st day? The writer of this article is just an another stupid sony fanboy, who cannot accept the fact, that the technically superior sony mashines are beaten in this console generation.