If you were paying attention to gaming news today, you probably heard the word about the next Dragon Quest game:

So, right, Dragon Quest IX is going to be on Nintendo DS. As an American gamer, you may be thinking, “So what?” Dragon Quest, after all, is hardly a big deal over here. The thing is, though, it’s still huge in Japan, and that’s still where most of the hardware we use and many of the games we play come from. It is pretty likely that Sony dropped a brick in its collective pants this morning, and for good reason.

This game represents a fundamental shift in focus, and I think it says a lot about the future.

While the consoles are nice and all, there are a kabillion people who now own a DS. Square is just doing the sensible thing, aiming for a well-entrenched demographic with a powerful title. The more platforms out there, the more units you can sell. It’s sort of a basic economic reality (though try telling that to Sony). With the power of the DS now a recognizable commodity, I wonder how long it will be when the first Massive game becomes available for the little handheld that could. Obviously, it wouldn’t be anything on the order of World of Warcraft. Traditional questing and raiding would almost certainly not be a possibility if for no other reason than the unreliability of wireless connections.

What I’d like to see would be a combo single-player game with a Massive element to it. Puzzle Pirates would be a perfect fit, I think, as would ATITD. Slot both of them into a sort of Animal Crossing mode, where you have a home space that you can play just fine without a connection. Then hook that into a larger context, where you can play online with other folks doing similar tasks.

Perhaps the single-player area in Puzzle Pirates DS could be your workshop, where you craft items for the economy. Then you head out into the ‘world’ when you’re net-connected to put your wares up for sale and to sail the briney sea. ATITD would be even easier: Just cram your camp into a big tent, and you can do everything that the game offers right there on your DS. You’d leave the tent for trading and cooperative tasks. We already know that you can ‘visit’ other people’s online spaces via the DS, and so you could even decorate your camp or workshop so that others could enjoy it.

Really, all you’d need to make Animal Crossing into a MMOG would be to give players some sort of larger shared space. That’d make for a great expansion. A ‘country’ region outside of the individual towns where players could gather new fish, new plants, buy new stuff for their homes … I know several players who have ‘beaten’ Animal Crossing by exhausting the stuff to do, and still want to do more. That’d be a great game.

The question here is when, not if, a MMOG will be released for the DS. Here’s hoping whoever gets there first makes a good impression for all the millions of DS-owning gamers out there.