Gaming News Round-Up: November 29th, 2004

Author: by Andrew Wilson, Simon Carless

Today's round-up shows massive Japanese shipping figures for Dragon Quest VIII, more promising results for Bits Corp, and a new Mizuguchi-headed publishing label for Bandai. - Japanese website Game Watch reports strong shipping figures for Square Enix's recently released, Level 5-developed PlayStation 2 RPG, Dragon Quest VIII. The latest game in the long-running series has shipped (although not necessarily sold) 3 million units across Japan since its release last week for the PlayStation 2. These figures come following total Dragon Quest VII sales figures of 4 million units on the PlayStation 1, making that game the largest-ever selling Japanese PS1 game. Dragon Quest is known as Dragon Warrior in North America, and made its debut on the NES back in 1989. While an exact release date hasn't been pinned down, Dragon Quest VIII is eventually slated for release in North America, likely later in 2005. - UK-based developer Bits Corp has reported its interim financial results for the six months ended September 30th, 2004. As developer of Rogue Ops and the video game adaptation of Warner Bros. Pictures' upcoming film Constantine, Bits Corp reported turnover at £1,051,000 ($1.98 million USD), as opposed to £1,062,000 ($2.0 million USD) reported at this time last year. The company reported profit both before and after taxes for the half year at £35,000 ($66,190 USD), in contrast to profits of £23,000 ($43,512 USD) at this time last year. - Publisher Bandai Japan has announced the unveiling of an all-new publishing label for the Japanese market, called qb. Covering simplistic titles that 'expand the gaming market' in some way, the qb label will see Tetsuya Mizuguchi, behind popular Sega titles Rez, Space Channel 5 and Sega Rally, serving as producer for the label. Mizuguchi, who also runs Japanese studio, Q Entertainment, will publish titles including Lumines (PSP) and Meteos (Nintendo DS) on this new 'boutique' qb label.