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At this year’s PAX, Dragon Quest executive producer Yuu Miyake and mobile producer Noriyoshi Fujimoto were asked about the prospect of Square Enix bringing Dragon Quest X, the first MMORPG for the franchise, to western audiences. Their reply was an enthusiastic, “We’d love to do it! Love to.”
They elaborated further on the topic:
“In terms of this being an MMO, again, we have to consider the operation and logistics of how to make that feasible,” Miyake said. He went on:
“We also have to think about it from a business standpoint. With Final Fantasy XI and XIV, it’s a global-scale endeavor. In terms of Dragon Quest, the way it’s perceived in the different countries is very, very different. How it’s perceived in Japan is different than how it’s perceived in the United States.
“In addition, we’d have to build a new data center for pretty much every location, and we need to make sure that makes sense as a business. We want to be able to operate in the different regions. Again, we would love to do it, but we’re still trying to work out the details and figure out what would work best [were we to bring it abroad].”
While previous Dragon Quest titles have been developed by other studios, like ArtePiazza and Level-5, Square Enix chose for the first time to develop this entry into the series entirely in-house. According to Miyake, previous Dragon Quest games were developed by studios that “understand Dragon Quest and know what’s appropriate for a certain platform,” but when considering what Japanese company knew MMOs the best, the answer was right in front of them– or rather, is them:
“With Dragon Quest X, because it’s an MMO, the team thought, ‘Okay, what company in Japan knows MMOs the best? Wait, that’s us! We’re running Final Fantasy XI, so, why not do it with an internal team?’ So, the concept isn’t about working with an outside company versus an inside company, it’s more like who works on a specific title and platform the best. We’re all kind of the same if you look at it from that perspective.”
Would you like to see Dragon Quest X come to the West? Drop a comment below and let us know.
Source: Siliconera
Over time, my excitement for this game has waned. If it gets released I’d probably still give it a try… but at this point I’d rather see a DQVII remake on 3DS instead.
(Makes me kind of sad to say that because I was incredibly excited for the game when it was first announced/released. But that time has long since passed, and when my hopes of seeing a Western release faded so did my interest level.)