We could get another Ni No Kuni situation where the action oriented HD game comes to the west but the more text oriented handheld version gets left behind. I am confident the HD version will come over because of the low sales of PS4 in Japan, it will easily be outsold by the handheld version, the only way they can make money with it on PS4/NX is if they push it hard in the west. Hopefully once the team that's on Bravely Second finishes they get to work on the 3ds version ASAP since I find it hard to imagine 3ds games in 2017 lighting up the charts.

Had Enix not come to the conclusion to not localize DQ V and VI on the SNES would DQ still not be a strong name in America?  Enix came to some ridiculous conclusion that America didn't want DQ after the fourth game, which came out on the NES well after the SNES had come out, didn't sell that well.  Of course any person with half a brain could figure out why an NES game released in 1992 didn't sell but Enix decided we didn't want DQ... but we did want obscure stuff like Robotrek, E.V.O. and Ogre Battle.  This would be like if Square had decided to not localize the Final Fantasy games but localized Romancing SaGa instead.

So the DQ series disappeared in North America for 9 years, skipping two games and an entire console generation.  Hell, since DQ VII didn't come out on the PS1 until after the PS2 launched it's more like it skipped two console generations.  The market in 2001 was way different than that of 1992.  If the series had had a regular release schedule in North America then perhaps it could have built up a fanbase.  Instead it's been this scattershot thing where maybe we get it, maybe we don't.  Well of course it doesn't have much of a fanbase here!

What makes it even sadder for Enix is Dragon Quest V was basically the precursor to Pokemon with the whole monster training and battling aspects, which they'd later use for their own Dragon Quest Monster spinoff.  If DQV had been released in America back in the day, it's the game that probably would have made DQ a much bigger deal over here because of how unique it was for its time.

I guess maybe Sony has more muscle and/or savvy to bring the PlayStation 4 version of Dragon Quest XI over to the Americas, Europe, and Oceania? Certainly, the platform is in more dire need of a games and JRPGs than the 3DS.

I don't expect to see DQ XI 3DS in English, but I really hope it does. That polygons and sprites split between the two screens looks so good.

It would be neat to see Sony and Nintendo working together on a localisation, considering the story is the same for each version they would kind of have to, and Square Enix is too incompetent to do it themselves.

I mean, it's always exciting to see a new Dragon Quest title- I grew up playing Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 and 2 and I've played a bit of VI and IX, but if Square Enix was going to give the series a shot again, they could have done it on Wii U where it would had literally no competition, or even 3DS which is still in more people's hands than any other system. Not factoring in their refusal to localize the 3DS remakes of VII and VIII (maybe? I've been hearing weird stuff about that one) which are considered even by western fans to be some of the biggest and best titles in the series, I feel like Dragon Quest has no audience in the west because Square has dug the grave themselves. The series has had a number of periods of inactivity in the west, of course, but I feel that there are so many ways one could promote the series- it has a beloved character artist, stagnant gameplay akin to Pokemon, a rich history in the industry. Hell, I'd go as far to say that if they did MORE with the gameplay and mechanics instead of letting it be so rooted in its traditions, they'd do more for the franchise as a whole. However, people play DQ games for a specific reason, and I can't fault that.

If DQ IX were the best-selling of the DS games outside Japan, which was a mainline entry and not a remake or spin-off, perhaps they'll be willing to try again with a new mainline entry. DQ X may have technically been mainline, but it was an MMO so it would have been expensive to release here with little potential for sales.

I agree with the likely outcome being just the PS4 version releasing here, which would be a bummer.