Nintendo hasn’t had a permanent presence at the Tokyo Game Show in over 10 years. There have been keynote addresses here and there, but it was never a huge deal for Nintendo, who generally put more concentration into their showings at E3 and SpaceWorld. Now, however, things have changed – Nintendo’s riding a high wave and they need to keep it that way.
In the past, a new Dragon Quest game essentially meant Enix (now Square Enix) would eclipse every other showing at TGS. The series is insanely popular in Japan, and now that Nintendo has landed DQIX as a Nintendo DS exclusive, they’ll be sure to take advantage of the guaranteed booth traffic. In addition, Nintendo and Square Enix will try to move people through their booths quicker (allowing even more people to stop in) by making the Dragon Quest IX demo downloadable to the DS by anyone in the area. Now that’s a great use for DS download play.
