Square Enix Outsourced Two-Thirds of Dragon Quest XI's Development

Square Enix executive Yosuke Saito recently revealed that internal teams handled roughly one-third of Dragon Quest 11's development workload, with external partners responsible for the remaining two-thirds.

That admission cuts through a common misconception. The Dragon Quest series has always leaned heavily on outsourcing—the vast majority of its work comes from external studios, a model that's been standard practice since the franchise's early days. Saito essentially confirmed what industry observers have long understood: when you see a Dragon Quest title, you're looking at a carefully coordinated collaboration rather than a single studio's output.

The exception that proves the rule is Dragon Quest 10 Online, which Saito describes as the hardest project of his career—and for a specific reason. Unlike the rest of the series, DQ10 Online was developed entirely in-house by Square Enix. The strain was significant enough that the team borrowed core members from the Final Fantasy 14 division, including director Naoki Yoshida, to keep things moving. It's the kind of resource juggling you'd expect in a massive open-world game, not a numbered entry in a series built on external collaboration.

What makes this interesting is how it contrasts with another Square Enix property. Nier: Automata pulled together external talent—director Yoko Taro, composer Keiichi Okabe, and action specialists PlatinumGames—to create what many consider one of the best action games of the past decade. The chemistry between PlatinumGames' combat precision and Taro's narrative sensibilities produced something neither party could have replicated alone. Heavy outsourcing, top-tier result.

Before Square and Enix merged, Enix operated more like a collective of producers and writers, collaborating project-by-project with external studios rather than maintaining large internal teams. Series creator Yuji Horii and his colleagues select which external teams handle specific development work—a curation role that's kept quality consistent across decades.

The real question isn't whether outsourcing works—clearly it does, at least for Dragon Quest. It's who takes responsibility when things go wrong. Horii and his team function as the creative architects, sketching the broad framework and marking key milestones, then trusting partners to execute individual villages and side quests. The fact that this model has produced consistently solid results suggests the selection and coordination process is more rigorous than outsiders might assume. But accountability remains murky when a project stumbles. That answer, probably, stays inside the industry.