Japan's biggest role-playing game series is, finally, hedging its bets.
Square Enix has announced Dragon Quest XI, the latest in its long-running, very popular line of RPGs that's something of a Japanese cultural phenomenon. The games sell millions of copies to a wide audience. This installment will be released in late 2016 or early 2017 in two versions; one on Sony's PlayStation 4 and one on the Nintendo 3DS. And that's a pretty big deal.
The publisher is always very choosy as to which platform the next Dragon Quest game ends up on. Spinoffs aside, its stated goal is always to release the next Dragon Quest on the most popular, best-selling game platform in Japan. And the series is so monumentally huge that its announcement and release always has the effect of cementing that platform's victory, since consumers (and other developers) will flock to the platform afterwards. It was a huge deal when Dragon Quest VII left Nintendo and became a PlayStation exclusive. It was even huger when Dragon Quest IX switched allegiances back and appeared on the portable Nintendo DS instead of a home console.
