Blue Dragon is a role-playing video game developed by Mistwalker and Artoon in collaboration with Microsoft Game Studios Japan and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. Blue Dragon is based on a design by Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, who also supervised development and wrote the plot. It is both Mistwalker's debut title and the first title to be helmed by Sakaguchi outside of Square Enix.
Taking place in a fictional open-world environment, the story of Blue Dragon focuses on five friends (Shu, Jiro, Kluke, Zola, and Marumaro) as they travel across the world to confront Nene, the evil ruler of the Grand Kingdom. The setting inspired separate animation and comic adaptations, although these follow the story to different degrees and feature a different cast of characters. The game follows a traditional role-playing design, based around exploration and turn-based combat.
Blue Dragon was the first Xbox 360 title to make use of multiple discs, spanning three discs in total. The game was released in Japan in December 2006, where it was sold both as a standalone title and as part of a bundle with the Xbox 360. Other regions received only the game itself, with a release in August 2007. Overall, the game received a generally positive reception, being both applauded and criticized for its adaptation of the traditional elements of role-playing games.