Dragon Quest IX opens to 2.3M in Japan - Report

It isn't common for the delay of a Nintendo DS game to cause significant hardship at a company, but that's just what happened earlier this year with Square Enix.

After stumbling across a "serious software bug" in February, Square Enix delayed its hugely anticipated Dragon Quest IX from late March to July 11 in Japan. In tandem, the publisher also slashed its fiscal-year earnings expectations by 17 percent and its profit projections by 62.5 percent.

With DQIX making its long-awaited debut over the weekend, it's clear that Square Enix's fiscal-year revisions were not an overreaction. Citing figures from Japanese stat-tracking firm Media Create, Andriasang reports today that DQIX sold 2,318,932 units during its first 48 hours on the Japanese market. Media Create notes that DQIX's Japanese debut was larger than that of DQVIII, which opened to 2.23 million units on the PlayStation 2 in 2004.

While extremely popular in Japan, the Dragon Quest series has been widely eclipsed elsewhere in the world by Square Enix's Final Fantasy series. Square Enix has said that it hopes to bolster the franchise's worldwide appeal with DQIX, giving the game a more action-oriented premise than previous games in the series. DQIX also includes support for four-player multiplayer.

Square Enix has yet to attach a release date to DQIX in regions outside of Japan. For more on the game, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.