Wright said:
The problem with that definition, which I'm not calling wrong, is that then almost every game made on a specific genre is niche, because most games are specialized in one area and profit from it. With that definition of yours, certain games can sell millions and they'd still be niche; because they are specialized in a specific corner of the market, and profitable. Because in this case we wouldn't be talking about "lesser known games that get to a tiny audience", but rather, a whole different meaning. I'm guessing you're saying these games are niche as in "very few people bought them but they loved them anyway" despite your first definition. And yet, they aren't. Valkyria Chronicles sold over a million units. Tactics Ogre in both platforms accumulate over a million units as well. The Banner Saga was extremely successful, and I could concede Disgaea isn't as successful as I thought. As for Advance Wars, we're talking about a franchise that sells more than half a million units per entry, save for the first DS game (which I honestly thought it was more successful). But if you need more examples, there's also King's Bounty, which were a series of successful SRPGs on PC, and let's just not mention Heroes of Might and Magic, which have spawned over six mainline entries and countless of spin-offs for multiple platforms. Sure, there are games like Vandal Hearts or Jeanne D'Arc which are niche because they didn't manage to pull such successful numbers like most of those. But as far as I can tell, I've managed to name quite a lot that did (and to be fair, there aren't much more). Add to them Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics and voila. Turns out SRPGs aren't niche, they just don't get that many games. |
i believe what it means by specialized is a small part of the overall market, in which case SRPG make up an extremely small part of the overall dedicated gaming market. does the genre even make up 1% of annual revenue or unit sales?
1 million is still pretty niche, if a device has an install base of 80 million and a game sells 1 million than that game sold to a whopping 1.25% of the install base, that is niche.
If a device sells 800 million units of software and the entire SRPG genre makes up 8 million of that, thats only 1%.
Most SRPGs fail to sell 1 million and the ones that do, dont sell much more than that. the genre typically has very low attach ratios and make up a very small amount of the software market. its a niche genre, thats not a bad thing, but its the truth.
the reason there arent alot of SRPG released is because its pretty damn niche.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
