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brendude13 on 14 September 2011
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Michael-5 said:
brendude13 said:
Michael-5 said:

5. My point was outside of Japan, JRPG's are still popular on the 360. People still appreciate JRPG's outside on the 360, so making games focused for the Japanese audience will still affect sales outside of Japan. What are you debating?

This is something that i'm still pretty pissed off about and something I completely disagree with. JRPG's flop on the Xbox 360, big time, Final Fantasy XIII only sold well on the Xbox 360 because of how big the franchise is and the hype surrounding it. For other JRPG's, the paid exclusivity deals combined with the poor sales have contributed to the decline of JRPG's in the West and is probably the reason why so many JRPG's aren't being localised.

I wouldn't relate Nintendo not localizing games in Americas with 360 at all. Nintendo has a history of not localizing JRPG's. Terrainigma, Mother, Fire emblem, Advance Wars, Final Fantasy III, and several other SNES JRPG's were never localized. The GBA/Cube generation saw a change, but that was likely because Cube wasn't selling well, and with SSBM fans were screaming for Marth. For the same reason we are seeing a new Kid Icarus.

Also many 360 JRPG exclusives sell about as well as PS3 counterparts. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey both sold over 800k (which is really good for a non Final Fantasy title on a console which has a tiny install base in Japan). Star Ocean, The Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery and Tales of Vesperia all also sold about 500-700k.

It's true PS3 JRPG's have sold better. Demon Souls is 1.25 million, Valkyria Chronicles is 1 million, and WKC is 800k, but the PS3 also has the Japan install base. If you ignored Japanese sales, those games would sell on par with the best JRPG's on 360.

I don't think console JRPG's are declining, they are just spreading out over 3 consoles, where before Sony basically had them all (and before that NES/SNES). It's sad that many great games are being spread out over multiple consoles, but what can you do? Hope the system goes on a price drop if anything.

I'm not talking about Nintendo, I'm talking about the Tales series specifically.

I'm surprised at how well Lost Odyssey sold to be honest, those are some decent numbers. Enough to convince me that JRPG's sell well on the XBOX 360? No. It doesn't matter if they sold well, it's the fact that if they were moved to another console, they would have sold better and the same people would have bought the game. I bought my XBOX 360 for Tales of Vesperia, it was the only game I bought my XBOX 360 for and that really pissed me off, having to jump to another console just because I had a huge interest in one game. People follow the games, not the console.

I will also admit you are right, in the West JRPG's sell pretty close on both platforms. Microsoft are trying to steal the JRPG crowd while SONY try to steal the FPS / TPS crowd, they are basically trying to steal eachothers fanbase without paying any attention to their own. This is the reason why I think JRPG's have been so mediocre and hard to come by this generation. They aren't differentiating themselves from eachother, that's the real problem, they are making their consoles as similar as possible and the only consoles that JRPG's can find success on are the handhelds.

As for the PS3 JRPG's you named, those games aren't big names and were most likely silent releases in the West, I am even more dissapointed at the Valkyria Chronicles sales, I thought it would have sold more than that. There aren't that many decent PS3 exclusive JRPG's to bring into the equation, I know I always say this, but thank god 2012 is looking better for the genre, I just hope they sell well.