I’m not sure about your history here. The SNES iterations of FF were localized for North American release, while Dragon Quest was not. Nintendo and Square parted ways in the 1990s, not because Nintendo was backing Enix’s Dragon Quest over and against Square’s FF, or because the FF games on the SNES lacked backing, but because Square was more and more interested in making movies, and the N64 not only wasn’t coming out any time soon, but didn’t have an optical disc drive. Enix also started developing for the PS1 for largely the same reasons. When DQ returned to a Nintendo system with IX, the fact it was on the DS instead of the PS3 upset quite a few fans, but Yuji Horii explained that he had to follow the most popular hardware in order to reach the most customers (and DQ IX did in fact end up being the most popular DQ today). It didn’t seem to have anything to do with backing from Nintendo. Similarly, the Wii has outsold the PS3 in every region. I suspect Horii expects the Wii U to build on that success (though I think he will be disappointed).
Meanwhile, FF has become more and more and more of a playable movie. So how is Nintendo supposed to be backing the series? There was no way they were going to keep the series in the 90s unless they decided to pursue cinematic gaming. And they’re not going to be getting the series back any time soon…look at what FF XIII was…you run down a beautifully rendered tube, from cutscene to cutscene…of course it was going to be on the PS3 and 360.
This email is a great example how people don’t read what I put out. So why even continue this site anymore? I never said anything the emailer accuses me of saying.
Final Fantasy was not entirely localized for Western release. Remember Final Fantasy 5? The NES versions of Final Fantasy 2 and 3 were not localized.
Aside from V and VI, every Dragon Quest game has appeared in North America. Nintendo Power wrote an article desiring Dragon Quest VI to be localized. I don’t remember Nintendo ever lamenting Final Fantasy III or V were not localized. There were freaking four Dragon Warrior games on the NES! Four!
As I said before, Final Fantasy was not the lame shell of a game it is today. But while Enix gave up on the American market, Square kept going ahead. A big reason why Square’s Final Fantasy games did not sell is because they were extremely expensive ($60, $70+). Also, people would just rent them. But people did play them. By soldiering ahead with putting the games out there, Square developed the launching padl necessary for Final Fantasy VII to rocket up in the West.
Nintendo keeps backing the wrong RPG horse. A game like Xenoblade has a larger chance to explode in the West than Dragon Quest (a game the West has never liked all the way to the first one). But you find Nintendo just drops that game cold. Why not allow someone else to publish it?
After seeing Nintendo try to push Dragon Quest on the west since the 8-bit generation, I think it is time to throw in the towel. That Dragon Quest X game won’t sell at all in the West. It cannot compete with Western MMORPGs. And why doesn’t Nintendo try to put some more western games, like western RPGs, onto their system? That’d be cool. But no, it’s all Dragon Quest all the time. I’m tired of seeing only that game pushed and others sitting on the bench (many intentionally not published). If Dragon Quest had any potential to explode in the West, it would have done so already. It’s time for Nintendo to find another game to flagship their RPG push. Dragon Quest certainly doesn’t have the ability to do it.