Famed Hironobu Sakaguchi & Akira Toriyama work to make Blue Dragon

[Vegeta]

Blue Dragon went on sale for pre-order. The 10,000 bundle packs sold out almost immediately at all stores. The other consoles without the game pack-in also sold out fast. Blue Dragon may be the 'Halo' of Japan, helping boost the Xbox name to sucess in a Nintendo/Sony stronghold."

Let no one doubt the power a popular anime artist and a popular RPG developer can have on a system's success in Japan. 1up is reporting that pre-orders for the 10,000 limited edition Blue Dragon Xbox 360 bundles are selling briskly, with some retailers running out of stock within minutes. This is the same console that barely sold 2,000 units in the country last week, making the healthy interest all the more surprising.

Is this sales surge a temporary blip due to a collectible bundle, or will Microsoft be able to parlay the interest into a sustainable market share in the country? Either way, we'd advise Microsoft that a boob-filled bundle for Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 couldn't hurt in the land of the giant huggable Kasumi pillow.

Famed game producer Hironobu Sakaguchi of Mistwalker game studio and developer Artoon present the highly anticipated Xbox 360-exclusive Blue Dragon. Featuring the character design of Akira Toriyama (who designed Dragon Ball Z) and music by Nobuo Uematsu (the composer for Final Fantasy), Blue Dragon is an epic RPG centered on a young boy named Shu and several of his friends. These unlikely heroes possess miraculous strength and magical power to control phantom shadows that mirror the actions of their masters.

Shu and company must use their shadows as weapons as they battle the evil forces and an antiquated human race of people who command a magical power thought to have perished long ago. Shu and friends must wield their skills to save their world from impending doom. Encountering various people on a planet with numerous ancient ruins, the characters and their shadows travel through a world full of mysteries and illusions, where the slightest touch can cause reactions of unparalleled magnitude.

http://www.tech.co.uk/home-entertai...dragon-save-the-xbox-360?articleid=1087314713

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/10/19/blue-dragon-helps-boost-360-in-japan/

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Blue_Dragon_to_be_the_Halo_of_Japan_360_s_sell_out_in_Japan

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Blue_Dragon_outsells_Zelda_in_Japan

I can't find the other sites I saw last night..it's so frickin' frustrating. But anyway, it's basically the producer behind the Final Fantasy series, Akira Toriyama, and the man that did the score for the Final Fantasy series.

 

[Adaptus]

I tried the demo on Live, but I wasn't that impressed. It seems every character is pretty equal when it comes to battling, except for minor differences, like one being able to heal, one being able to use offensive magic, etc. Pretty much every attack works the same way, too. You select it, then a charge bar appears which you can try to stop in a highlighted area for more damage. The blue dragons that each character seems to have also seem rather bland and uninspired. To me, it came across as a very mediocre RPG, and I really don't see all the fuss about it. I'm much more interested in Mass Effect and Lost Oddysey.