Square Enix Anticipates Multiple Dragon Quest IX Purchases for Families

A Shibuya retailer promotes its 7:00 early opening for Dragon Quest IX.

Nintendo has been pretty clear that with the DSi it hopes to switch the paradigm for system ownerships from one system per family to one system per person. It looks like Square Enix expects something similar from Dragon Quest IX.

In an interview posted at Chunichi Web, Dragon Quest series creator Yuji Horii suggested that Square Enix expects families to buy multiple copies of the game. Responding to a question about the lower price point of the game compared to its PS2 predecessor, Dragon Quest VIII, Horii said "The last title was ¥8,800, but this time we anticipated that because of the wireless play families would buy multiple copies, so we worked towards a retail price of a bit over ¥5,000."

While DQIX has an MSRP of ¥5,980, most retailers will be selling it for, as Horii said, a little over the ¥5,000 mark. This is typical for game releases here.

Chunichi is a newspaper, so it shouldn't be surprising that they didn't ask Horii about recent reports about DQIX allowing for just one save at a time.

The paper asked Horii about sales targets for the game. "With the spread of cell phones and the internet, there are fewer people who spend their free time on games," responded Horii. "However, there have always been fans who say 'If it's Dragon Quest, I'll play it,', so we'd like to cross the 4.9 million mark of the last entry."

Horii also shared one interesting statistic about the game for those wondering about play time. There are around 200 small episodes (presumably quests) which can be finished in about an hour, he said.

That sound like a whole lot of play time. Maybe if you work hard enough you'll be able to clear it all before Dragon Quest X comes out.

Dragon Quest IX hits on Saturday.