After Final Fantasy XI success, Square Enix hasn’t been having much luck with MMORPG: Final Fantasy XIV was released in an incomplete state back in 2010, forcing the company to work on it as the game was already available, salvaging what could have been salvaged and getting a new version of the game developed. The game’s low quality almost tarnished the series and the company’s reputation.
The MMORPG problems are not yet over for Square Enix: Dragon Quest X has been released over 1 year ago on Wii, with a Wii U version coming in the near future and has sold very low. The company describes sales as below expectation in Japan and this is indeed something strange: the Dragon Quest series is one of the most successful franchises in Japan and such low sales were probably unexpected. Coupled with the servers’ costs, the game is starting to become a burden for Square Enix.
However we have to consider the fact that the game was released on a dying console so it’s a bit earlier to say the world “failure”: the game still has to launch on Wii U so things may be slightly changing. At the same time many MMORPGs have slow starts and this could be the case of Dragon Quest X.
The Wii U version will be coming in the next month in Japan. No news on a possible North American and European version at the moment: the Wii version is obviously not coming.
