Japan Charts: Dragon Quest VIII drives record growth, PS2 sales rocket

Very interesting comment about the second week of DQVIII sales. They say the last one sold over a million in it's second week :O

Rob Fahey 11:41 03/12/2004

Long-awaited new chapter in the Dragon Quest saga beats its predecessor's records

Square Enix' latest instalment in the epic Dragon Quest series has had a major effect on the Japanese market, selling over two million units in its first weekend at retail and driving major PS2 hardware sales.

Dragon Quest VIII sold 2.167 million units in two days, according to the latest figures from market research firm Media Create, making it into a faster seller than its predecessor, Dragon Quest VII, which sold 1.83 million units in its first week.

The PlayStation 2 RPG title, which comes from Square Enix' largest franchise outside the Final Fantasy series, is also believed to be well-stocked at retail and should have healthy second week sales, matching the previous title which sold over a million units in the second week.

The launch of the eagerly awaited game drove sales of the PS2 skywards, with Sony's console taking almost 74 per cent market share as a result, compared with 22 per cent for the Game Boy Advance and four per cent for the GameCube.

Further down the chart, no other new releases made a particularly large impact, but Sony's Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal came in at number two, continuing the popularity of the US-developed series in Japan.

Anime-based titles featured heavily in the rest of the chart, with Tomy's Naruto 3 (Cube) at number six, Banpresto's Dragon Ball Advance Adventure (GBA) at seven, and Bandai's Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny (GBA) at number eight.

Aside from Dragon Quest VIII and Gundam SEED Destiny, the only other new release in the top ten was Dorart's PS2 title Slotter Up Core 5, which came in at number five this week.
 
Wow, this just crush FF sales there eh? FF now sells about 2 millions in its lifetime with each new releases (not ripoffs like CC.)
 
Yup

Dragon Quest has always been a fair bit bigger than Final Fantasy in Japan. This one will probably do about 3.7m (it won't do a million 2nd week, maybe 500k if lucky), whereas FFX did 2.3m??
 
Dragon Quest isn't just "bigger", it's considered a Japanese tradition, whereas Final Fantasy is merely another video game series.
Everyone (from office ladies to 6 year old kids) in Japan knows about Dragon Quest, but only otaku and high school kids know about Final Fantasy.

That's the difference.
 
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