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JWeinCom on 23 April 2020
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The_Liquid_Laser said:
JWeinCom said:

It was never going to be that close, especially in Japan.  Trying to predict sales based on the original which launched over two decades ago doesn't work.  Much different market these days. In particular the Final Fantasy franchise is not nearly as big as it used to be, while the PS4's market is significantly smaller than PS1's.

Meanwhile, Switch games have generally been selling much higher than than games launched on the 3DS, and New Leaf's official numbers I think are about 12 million from Nintendo... and it's still actually selling a bit.  5.75 million of those are in Japan, so even if New Horizons just held that number and didn't beat New Leaf it would comfortably beat FFVII.

Ten million was basically the maximum for FFVII and the minimum for Animal Crossing.  JRPG is just a far smaller market.  

I know you are going to tell me you knew it all along, but you might want to reevaluate your thinking.  JRPG is not a small market in Japan.  The Japanese, in fact, really like Japanese RPGs.  It's Japan.  Other than Animal Crossing, what are the big franchises in Japan?  Dragon Quest, Pokemon, Monster Hunter...they're all JRPGs.  JRPG is the most popular genre in Japan!

It's true that Animal Crossing is crushing FF7R in sales, but it isn't because FF7R is a JRPG.  People unfairly crap all over JRPGs when talking about worldwide sales.  It's an even worse argument when we are talking about Japan.

Most recent Dragon Quest game is at 3.3 million across 3DS and PS4 and about 4 million WW.

I wouldn't call Monster Hunter to be a JRPG, but without arguing over genre, it's obviously a much different kind of JRPG than FFVII is. Even so, most recent game is at about 2.2 million in Japan and 4 million WW.

They both might sell a little more, but neither is anywhere in the league of New Leaf.  

The only JRPG that's selling near that level is Pokemon, which is an outlier.  Expecting FFVII to sell on Pokemon levels would be like expecting Street Fighter to sell at the same level as Smash.