Square Enix not lacking confidence in Dragon Quest IX

Is Dragon Quest IX really "almost done"? And does it even matter? We're not so sure, because Square Enix still isn't budging on a release date for the game. Company President Yoichi Wada announced at Square Enix's recent earnings briefing that the game will be released at some point in the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2009. Are we about to see that hopeful 2008 release date cruelly taken away from us? How much longer will we be writing paragraphs consisting almost exclusively of questions?

However long we wait, Square Enix is confident of one thing: Dragon Quest IX is going to sell like cakes of the exceedingly hot variety. "With the DS, 10 million units is a possibility," proclaimed Wada to a bunch of no doubt beatific investors. He's presumably talking about global sales rather than Japan-only figures, but even so, isn't that a touch optimistic? We think it is, anyway -- as it stands, no game published by a third-party has come even close to the magical eight digit mark.