To show the widespread appeal of Square Enix’s Dragon Quest IX, Nintendo held a slumber party for 12-year-old girls.
Dragon Quest is one of the most popular franchises in Japan and able to sell millions in just days. In North America, it’s still popular, but the sales numbers aren’t even close. Nintendo said that it would be promoting Dragon Quest IX to hopefully bring the series into more overseas households, and one of those promotions recently included a slumber party for 12-year-old girls.
Read that last sentence as many times as you want, but it’ll keep saying the same thing. Nintendo held a Halloween slumber party for at least 6 or more pre-teen girls and set them loose with DSi systems and Dragon Quest IX. From photos of the event we see the girls were given Dragon Quest slime shirts to wear, and the room/home they were in was littered with Dragon Quest decorations and plushies. They apparently played Dragon Quest IX‘s tag mode and helped each other kill monsters while collecting loot.
This promotion seems odd, but you really can’t blame Nintendo for trying. There’s no reason why 11 and 12-year-olds shouldn’t be into Dragon Quest IX, but you wouldn’t typically think of them as the series’ target audience. Why not give events like these a shot and attempt to distribute the photos to more casual websites that could promote Dragon Quest IX as a female and pre-teen friendly game?
Anything that makes a segment of the population take a second look at a videogame worth playing that they would otherwise ignore is cool with me. I just want a chance to get my hands on one of those shirts and plushies too, though I can totally understand Nintendo not wanting to host a slumber party full of grown hardcore RPG fans.
