Dragon Quest VIII sells 2.2 million in two days at retail

Square Enix' latest RPG title, Dragon Quest VIII, has quickly become one of the company's fastest selling games ever, with over 2.2 million units sold out of the initial 3 million unit shipment in just two days.

The launch of the latest title in the Dragon Quest series - known as Dragon Warrior in North America - has been greeted with the kind of massive retail queues which are only associated with the very biggest product launches, even in the Far East.

The company announced last week that it was shipping three million units of the eagerly awaited title, while the 2.2 million sales figure for the first weekend comes courtesy of market research firm Media Create.

Dragon Quest is considered to be Square Enix' largest franchise outside of the Final Fantasy series, and was the main RPG series developed by Enix prior to its merger with Square.

The latest instalment of the franchise, which is exclusive to the PlayStation 2 and is expected to be launched in the United States next year, boasts character designs by well-known artist Akira Toriyama, who is better known in the west for his work on Square's SNES-era RPG Chrono Trigger and as the creator of Dragon Ball.