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Dragon Quest abandons ship

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Swifty

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Square's is increasing their commitment to Nintendo it looks like. Perhaps they've recognized that future PS3 marketshare probably won't reach the marketshare of the PS2? Marketshare could probably be the primary grievance. The PSP probably would be a perfect target for a Dragon Quest game since it has larger storage medium than the Nintendo DS (1.8 GB versus 128 MB) and it's as powerful as a PS2. Alas, we're seeing DQIX being announced for the DS. That correlates very well with the PSP not doing so well.

But let's shift the focus from marketshare to simple design and production paradigms. When building an RPG, it's probably not going to be computationally complex as say a modern first person shooter since the code could probably do without things such as classical physics calculations, complex shader algorithms, and advanced artificial intelligence subroutines (Unless you're making a more action oriented RPG like Mass Effect, Oblivion, or Kingdom Hearts). Could it be that the PS3 could be simply too powerful for RPGs? Do you really need a multi-threading processor and a powerful GPU loaded with a kajillion shaders to make your RPG? I don't think it's financially efficient to hire a developer who can code parallel processing algorithms for your game that's inherently more story oriented and is primarily based on statistics and probability. :p

And why not Wii I wonder? Wii will have the greatest market penetration out of all the three consoles. Is Square-Enix afraid that the controller will produce expectations demanding them to use it, even though their games primarily don't necessitate the use of pointing devices?

Though, I would like to see more RPGs that resemble their PC counterparts; pointing the cursor at an enemy to order a party member to attack in lieu of cycling through a list of enemies.

EDIT: Oops. Did not realize that there was another DQ thread posted regarding this news.
 
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I guess Square is doing it because the DS is te most popular system in japan right now (and probably close to being of all time at this rate)... Which is kind of bonkers.

I don't think it is possible to say something like the PS3 is too powerful for the genre... a lot of benifit to the PS3 is the disk size. Personally I don't think FPS need to significantly more rescources by definition (actually, form my experiences, I've seen the oposite). It really boils down to the same thing as attention to detail.

The Demo of Final Fantasy XIII shows that, if the game really does end up looking like that, it will be filled with a lot of animation sequences and algorithms for making realistic real-time cinematics (or the cheap way out, which is an impossible number of FMV)

I would think its not on the Wii because it doesn't want to steal the thunder from DQ Swords (or on the PS3, FFXIII). Of course, since developement started last year, they didn't have Wii dev kits ^_^;; (PS3 too?) Maybe we will see DQX earily on, as 10 is a significant number in a series, it may be an even bigger game.
 
Some people forget that the first six Dragon Quest games were on the Famicom and Super Famicom systems respectively in Japan. The only game on the original Playstation was Dragon Quest VII (not counting spin-off games) and the only game on the Playstation 2 was Dragon Quest VIII and also Dragon Quest Yangus (though that was a spin-off).

My opinion is that I don't think they want to develop anything particular for the Wii with the Wii-remote and such with their main series (they are experimenting with Dragon Quest Swords). The X-Box 360 is an American system that a Japanese company does not want to put it's prized franchise on, never mind the fact that it isn't popular. The Playstation 3 is out for the reasons Swifty described, I suppose.

The opportunities that are arriving from the DS are imminent, and I think that's what Square-Enix wants to try.
 
Personally I don't think FPS need to significantly more rescources by definition (actually, form my experiences, I've seen the oposite). It really boils down to the same thing as attention to detail.
Click to expand...
Depends what we're talking about. RPGs tend to require immensely more art assets such as textures and sound whereas games that require more interaction from the player tend to have more computations and processes dictating the underlying game logic that's not related to the graphics output.
 
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