Beloved Japanese role playing game franchise Dragon Quest has enjoyed frenzied launches for more than twenty years, with lines that make Apple's launch queues look piddly by comparison.
Last Friday, Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito, the latest installment in the series was launched for the Nintendo DS, and long lines of customers shelled out their ¥5,980 for a copy of the game.
This morning, two market research companies, Enterbrain and Media Create, released their tallies of the game's weekend sales, both of which exceeded 2.3 million units. This made Dragon Quest IX the fastest-selling video game in Japanese History, a feat not quite so surprising, considering the title it outsold was actually the last Dragon Quest game.
All the previous titles in the Dragon Quest series were launched on home consoles, and followed up with ports to handhelds. This is actually the first non-spin-off Dragon Quest title that was launched on a handheld, and the Wii version will follow.
Even with a launch week truncated into a weekend, sales of over 2.3 million units make this one of the top 5 biggest video game launches of all time. Fans had been waiting for more than four-and-a-half years for it.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009