Square-Enix Explains Delay for Western Release of Dragon Quest IX

Dragon Quest IX was released in Japan on July 11, 2009. A year later, the highly anticipated JRPG is finally getting released in North America, but why did it take so long?

In an interview with Kotaku, Square-Enix’s Ryutaro Ichimura, Producer of Dragon Quest IX, said:

“The reality is that we were not able to develop all versions of the game simultaneously, since making the Japanese version alone proved to be a huge challenge for us. From there, we had more than a million letters of Japanese text to translate, which explains the delay between the release of the various versions.”

Although Square-Enix has spent the last year getting Dragon Quest IX ready for a North American release, Ichimura doesn’t believe the game has lost any momentum and that it’s still a great time to release the title.

“A simultaneous worldwide launch would have been really impressive. But fortunately the Nintendo DS hardware hasn’t lost momentum since our Japanese launch, so we don’t feel as though the opportunity is any less at this time.”

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies goes on sale this weekend in North America on July 11.

Source: Kotaku via GoNintendo