Ka-pi96 said:
TruckOSaurus said:
I think this whole debate rests on the fact that you're using your own version of the word niche which in reality doesn't fit any of the franchises mentionned. The best definition of niche that I found is in French but I'll translate it best I can to English :
Un marché de niche est un marché très étroit correspondant à un produit ou service très spécialisé. Le fait de viser un marché de niche permet souvent d’être confronté à une concurrence moins forte, mais les volumes de ventes potentiels sont naturellement plus faibles.
In English: A niche market is a very narrow market that corresponds to a very specialized product or service. Targetting a niche market often allows to face weaker competition but the potential volume of sales in naturally smaller.
Zelda, Uncharted, God Of War, Horizon, any franchise that sells multiple million copies doesn't fit this definition. I guess your intention is to differenciate these series with the franchises that sells over 10m copies like CoD, Mario Kart and GTA and I agree with you that there should be two different terms for each category but "niche" is not the term you're looking for.
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Firstly, you speak French? :O
Secondly, yeah that's pretty much the definition I've always used for niche. I'd say how many copies the game sells is actually irrelevant. Whether it sold 10 copies or 20 million copies as long as it's still an action-adventure/RPG game and isn't some really weird variation of those games or a different genre altogether it still wouldn't be niche. That fits in with that definition perfectly. Target market and potential/predicted sales = whether niche or not rather than actual sales.
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Yes, I'm from Quebec. French is my first language.
I can agree that in the end sales are not the main characteristic that defines a niche game. The Football Manager series would be a perfect example of a niche series. It caters to very specific interests and has little competition in that field.
