Square Enix‘s latest remake, Dragon Quest HD-2D Remake, has reached 2 million copies sold since the game was released on November 14th. The title see’s a return to the original trilogy of Enix’s flagship series (now working in reverse as I and II are set to release next year) reimaging the 1988 classic using Square Enix’s panorama mix of 3D graphics and pixel sprites that was popularized by their game Octopath Traveler.
Released for the PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series, and PC this is not the first port or remake of the NES game even if it is the most bold. The game had previously seen release on the Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, and phones, and the original trilogy is currently available on the Nintendo Switch eShop.
While Dragon Quest HD-2D Remake is not the first produced in the style it is noticeably the fastest selling, beating both Octopath Traveler II, Triangle Strategy, and Star Ocean: Second Story R in the same timeframe, with Triangle Strategy seeing a million sales in 9 months. What we do know is even the game that helped kickstart this trend at Square Enix, Octopath Traveler, took four months to reach 1 million copies sold, making Dragon Quest a far bigger success.
Of course, Dragon Quest continues to be one of the best-selling franchises in Japan managing 821,770 units across the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch in first-week physical sales alone. Factoring in digital sales, this could mean that over half of these sales are coming from Japan. Of course,m there has been a trend towards turn-based games in the West as well recently with Sega-owned titles Persona 3 Reload, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Metaphor: Refantazio all-seeing a million sales in impressive timeframes compared to previous entries with the latter reaching that number in less than a day.
It is important to note as well that Dragon Quest III HD-2D is the first of these remakes to see a simultaneous release worldwide across all major platforms. Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy were released exclusively for the Switch before coming to other platforms while Octopath Traveler II and Star Ocean skipped the Xbox consoles, something Square Enix commonly did but has now been working to reverse course on.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D has also seen the biggest concurrent player counts for a single-player game for Square Enix on Steam, peaking at 45,357 with its launch being slightly lower at 37,323. Square Enix currently has I-II HD-2D remakes slated for a 2025 release date, which is hopefully poised to keep this success upon release. Square Enix has constantly singled out HD games as an important part of their business model moving forward so it is safe to expect even more announced in the future, maybe even a Chrono trigger? One can dream at least.
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