Dragon Quest IX Global Best-Seller For Q3

05 Nov 2009 at 17:44:28 by Tim McDonald

Dragon Quest IX was the best-selling game in the world for the third quarter of 2009.

These sales figures attest to the series' ludicrous popularity in Japan, because that's the only place Dragon Quest IX is on sale. That's right: a Japan-only game was the best-selling game in the world for three months.

According to GI.biz, Dragon Quest IX sold in the region of 3.93 million units from July to the end of September, while Wii Sports Resort took second despite lagging behind on with 3 million sales. The breakdown of sales for the latter was reportedly 1.7 million units in the States, 841,000 units in Japan, and 465,000 units in the UK.

The other interesting statistic was that the fourth place title was Pokemon Heartgold/Pokemon Soulsilver - updates of Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver - which, again, have thus far only been released in Japan.

The lesson? Don't underestimate Japan, clearly. Or release two slightly different versions of your game to get more sales. Or, um, release your games on DS and you'll hopefully tap into a wider market. One of them, anyway.

The five top-selling games worldwide for the quarter are listed below, along with their estimated sales, judged from data released by NPD, GfK Chart-Track, and Enterbrain.

1. Dragon Quest IX - 3,925,000
2. Wii Sports Resort - 3,014,000
3. Madden NFL 10 - 2,612,000
4. Pokemon Heartgold/Pokemon Soulsilver - 2,068,000
5. Halo 3: ODST - 1,847,000
   

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