One of the lingering questions in North American video games is “Why is Final Fantasy still popular to this day, and why can’t Dragon Quest catch on?” Indeed, Final Fantasy XV shipped 5 million copies within its first day, but neither Nintendo nor Square Enix have commented on the sales of Dragon Quest VII.
Yeah, that probably means it’s not a pretty picture.
Yet, Square Enix still presses on. The company promised to further promote the series in the English-speaking world, and everyone there is sticking to it. When asked by EDGE why the series has trouble catching on, Dragon Quest Executive Producer Yu Miyake laughed and said “It’s a topic we have been thinking about a lot internally.”
One reason he points to Final Fantasy being much more popular is the timing of when they were released. In the mid-1980s, Japanese console gamers loved RPGs, and Dragon Quest was front and center defining how they evolved. In North America, JRPGs didn’t find mainstream success until Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation.
One conclusion that we’ve reached is that it’s a question of historical timing. When the Famicom came out, Dragon Quest was the key game everyone was playing. But when the PlayStation came out, Final Fantasy VII was the game that everyone was playing. So the source of nostalgia is different for both groups: in Japan it’s Dragon Quest while overseas it’s Final Fantasy. The truth is that if we’d put a lot of effort into localising Dragon Quest at the time, we probably wouldn’t be facing this issue today. I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but we kind of messed up in that regard.
North America also missed out on the Super Nintendo-era Dragon Quest games, and that was about the same time Final Fantasy’s seeds were first being laid.
The cartoonish element also holds Dragon Quest back
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