Well... that and because they sell way more RPGs then everybody else.   If you've got a buying pattern where 50 people by 1 of one product, and the rest of a similar product sell around 5 each... then you can make some pretty statistically likely assumptions.

That being, that the people buying the RPGS other then Final Fantasy are most likely about all the same people... ala Niche audience. 

Therefore the majority of people who are buying FF games, arn't buyin other RPGS.

Now, for the people who are only up for 1 or 2 a generation, they're going to buy mostly on brand name, as they don't have much expierence, and want to go with what they know and are familiar with, because while an unknown name (new IP, lesser known IP) may be better or worse, with the known name... they know what they are getting.

Honestly, yeah.  I mean, most RPGS, or atleast the turn based ones sell horrible outside of Japan.  The reason being, a lot of people hadn't played RPGS since before FF7, and a lot of those people playing Final Fantasy games arn't playing other RPG games... you can see that by RPG sales outside of the Final Fantasy series sucking outside of Japan. (aside from a couple notable exceptions.)

I mean, by your logic... Pokemon is the most well crafted and highest quality RPG in existance because of how much it sells.

If FF7 brought in more fans of the genre, other games in the genre would have enhanced popularity as well... however due to the sales, it's clear that FF7 didn't create fans of RPGs, it created fans of the FF brand.

I can't gauge what the best RPG is since I haven't played them all but of all the ones I have played FF is the best. More importantly though, devs tend to put their RPG's on the system that has FF because FF attracts the most RPG gamers.

Lost Odyssey's sales are going to be the most interesting. It will do Blue Dragon numbers in Japan but I am more interested if the 360 US/EU userbase lap it up.

Outside of FF, LO looks the best JRPG currently in production.

The reason FFVII was able to achieve what it achieved is because of the unbelieveable marketing blitz that Sony put into the game. It was the hype that made me a FF fan as until the wave of TV ads and other marketing and being hailed as the greatest game ever created I would not have played it. I am glad I did play it, but it was the hype that caused it. 

In Japan at least DQ>FF.

In fact I'm willing to bet that DQIX will outsellf FFXIII significantly worldwide. FF worldwide numbers have been dropping since VII while DQ has been rising since V. This generation DQ will be the king of RPGs.

They have been dropping or are you just referring to FFXII?

Because FFX outsold FFVIII and FFIX. And the last FF of a generation sells the least? That's a shock.

Using your logic, please explain FFIX selling 5.3mil while FFX selling 7.95mil? Because 5.3 mil is similar to FFXII numbers that didn't carry on to FFXIII numbers. See? too many flaws in the "FF series is dying" logic.

And expect a MASSIVE marketing blitz from Sony for FFXIII. That will definitely happen. Kitase has already started it by making the bold statement with his FFVII level improvement comparisons.

And unless S-E can change how DQ is viewed by the US DQIX will not be king of anything and it will have to do phenomenal numbers in Japan to beat FFXIII WW.

Which is kinda the point.  Most people don't play a lot of RPGs because they take like 4-8 times longer then most other games to complete.  Other then a few RPG fanatics.  Most of those same fanatics tend to not like the modern Final Fantasys, because they've played many many other RPGS and like a lot of others better.

I mean would you call the guy who plays almost nothing but Halo an expert on FPS, or would you call someone who's played nearly every FPS released on consoles and CPU a FPS expert.  It's like the people who call Final Fantasy tactics the best SRPG game ever when they haven't even released over half of them in the USA.

 Actually I missed FFIX when I was looking through the numbers, my mistake.

S-E will still need to attract an audience outside Japan if they even remote to hope that DQIX to outsell FFXIII WW. It will require a lot of advertising and a lot of hype. Dragon Quest IX will need to sell over 6mil in order to even have a chance of beating FFXIII since I can practically guarantee 6+mil for FFXIII.

And the "niche" JRPG userbase you talk about clearly doesn't apply to FF main games like it does other JRPG's. The game is guaranteed to sell in Europe and America and by the time it's released in those regions the PS3 will not have a userbase or price issue. DQIX is not so guaranteed to sell well outside Japan. 

This thread was about Valkryie of the Battlefield, not about FF.

It looks very impressive. I'm definetely looking forward to it, but Im going to reserve my judgement til I see more.

 Agreed. As I think the games art design is the best part. Makes it look like the PS3's Advance/Batallion Wars. And that's a good thing. Not being realistic doesn't make it childish.