In Japan, several jaws are still sitting idly on the floor from when Square-Enix announced that the next true Dragon Quest sequel would not only be on the Nintendo DS, but a co-op experience. Thankfully, those few Japanese jaws can now be brought back to the locked position, as the RPG publisher has revealed that it would only support local cooperative play, something that comes as a disappointment and a shock. They didn't give an excuse, just an explanation: "From the beginning of development, co-op play hasn't been via WiFi, but rather DS wireless play."

Without going too deep into the obvious fact that it's a pain to get four people together to play a shooter in the same room, let alone a 30+ hour RPG (that will likely require four copies of the game and four DS systems), there are still big questions this choice poses. Why is Squeenix, a company that actually got cross-system play through the Wii and DS working, failing to provide online play in one of their biggest franchises? Why, after just announcing that the next iteration of the Final Fantasy series will be an MMORPG, does it feel like Square is completely ignoring the online scene?

We'd contact Square for a comment, but we're simply too sad to do so, and we all know how bad it is to contact PR people when you're emotion driven.

[Via Kotaku]