The Tokyo Game Show 2011 is just ten days away, but Square Enix preferred to hold a separate press conference in Tokyo to announce their next big game, Dragon Quest X [JP]. Perhaps the biggest surprises, after months of anticipation, are that the tenth installment in the 25-year old RPG series will be an online RPG and available on both the Wii and the Wii U.
The full title of the game is “Dragon Quest X: Awakening of the Five Tribes Online”, with Square Enix planning to release it next year on the Wii (a date for the Wii U hasn’t been fixed yet). Players will be exploring the same world on both consoles and can transfer game data to their 3DS and share it with other players via Streetpass.
This is the first official screenshot:
Square Enix hasn’t revealed too much as to what the game will actually be about, but it looks like players can form parties with others online, choose between five races and explore the five continents of a world called Astortia (for offline players, there will be NPCs, too). Unlike Dragon Quest IX and VIII (which were created by Level-5), X is being developed by Square Enix alone.
As previous Dragon Quest did make their way out of Japan, you can expect X to hit the US and other places after the Japan release, too (even though no official announcement has been made yet).
Here’s a first (unofficial) trailer in Japanese: