Dragon Quest IX Rocket Launch

So, finally, after some seriously long "hours" of waiting, the launch of Dragon Quest IX: Guardian of the Starry Skies descended upon us, like loli Jesus would do in front of a crowd of innocent middle-school girls. It was expected by many to be a huge success, at least marketing-wise, but instead, according to some Internet sources, the launch itself was a major fail. Why do people think that?



Well, for starters, days before the actual release, many torrents sites were bombarded with leaked versions of the game, versions which were magically leaked ahead to cracking groups, allowing them to bypass any protection DQ IX might have had and to freely distribute the game via various torrent sites. Secondly, the first user-made reviews that popped up on portals like Amazon (quite a few of them), were unfriendly, to say the least; people seem to have a grudge against this release for no apparent reason, at least now, when the hype reaches heavenly levels, when the actual contact between the game and the community is rather thin, and when we have the best opportunity to throw garbage at a product that hasn't even been thoroughly reviewed yet.

I, for one, find both reasons stated above to be less than viable for Dragon Quest IX not to be a marketing success. First of all, the "leaking" to the public routine has worked before, with great increase in several games' revenues. It's a cheap trick used by publishers / developers to test the virgin soil of their target groups beforehand. Remember Half-Life 2? Remember the source leak back then? They said it was an "evil inside job", meant to ruin the game and the company, but it actually was a great strategic move - folks got to "test" the game, reactions came quickly, and the producers learned what was good and what was wrong. So they fixed it. And the game sold like melon bread in a world fully inhabited by Shana clones.

I won't comment about user-made reviews, because the subjectivism in those is usually too high to take them seriously. In any case, I would not bother so much about Dragon Quest's sales, especially in Japan. If there is something to worry about, is the plain quality of the game, but I guess I still have to wait a bit before I can rate this as good or bad, because in my country, certain games are shipped according to the distribution company's morning erection. Which seems to happen not so often, lately.

Thanks Sankaku Complex for the scoop.