Which ones are less important than SMT: Final fantasy, Dragon Quest, Pokemon, Monster Hunter, Kingdom Hearts and Tales of ...?

In order it would be Final Fantasy then Dragon Quest and THEN the SMT series. But it isn't about sales, It's about who is the biggest RPG franchise (The number of games released) xD. It is know as one of the three main RPG series for that. Think about it as the RPG Triforce xD

I didn't know about Catherine, that's really nice.

To the 'system-seller'-part, let's analyze it. It feels believable, as I see my own feelings towards Atlus-games. I said already in another thread: if SMT5 and EO5 are Vita-exclusive I will buy a Vita without any doubts. So, yes that feels like system-seller. But the base is not big. Let's say, Atlus has around 1 million fans on Sony-machines (Persona-fans mainly) and 1 million fans on Nintendo-handhelds (SMT+EO mostly). As I described my feelings, I think it is not impossible that even a high number as 50% can be driven to buy a system based on Atlus-games. That would be 500K in each case (as the other million already uses a machine of that manufacturer) or 1 million in the case of MS. No, MS has difficulties in Japan and a big part of Atlus sales are in Japan, so probably also for MS only 500K. In the case of the WiiU and the Vita that would be a noticeable number. In the case of a more successful machine (like 3DS) it would be of less impact. But the big three need to start sales, and it seems it could work with Atlus-games. So yes, probably really some system-seller potential and probably a good purchase for the console-makers. Gamers mostly would prefer that it stays 3rd-party though.

Also consider that their games usually stay under budget. They make profits just selling 700k copies most of the time. A dev like that who can also move consoles with exclusives looks like a pretty valuable pick up. But yeah I agree that likely more profitable as a third party.

They do own a good number of them, and yes fire emblem deals with death and loss so its pretty dark. The point there was that nintendo's studios and partners are never held back by nintendo.

Give me an example. I hear you guys painting this mean scenario of nintendo, but theres no example of this. Its all a bias in your heads.

Nintendo only owns eternal darkness, metroid, fire emblem, golden sun.

In fire emblem, when you play on classic mode, the characters don't even die. They just leave the battlefield.

Have you played persona? In persona 3, your characters summon their gods by taking out a gun and shooting themselves in the face. Persona also talks about death, murder, rape, has lots of sexual innuendo and themes, not just sexual sounding voices and one liners, but actual narrative, and lots of religious philosophy.

PS: I'm not arguing against you or dialga, just correcting the differences here. I'm not saying Nintendo is kiddy either. I'm saying atlus is very dark. Catherine is basically a game about rape.

I have played fire emblem and i have played persona 3 and 4. But it sounds like you only Played Fire emblem awakening. Characters that died in battle were lost forever in the games. Awakening was the only one to give us the choice to not have that happen. And it was a welcome change.

The stories are about war, death, murder, loss, ambition, friendship and love. They are just as dark as persona if you ask me. Persona just focus on it more because its the central theme of the game to find out what is going on, while in fire emblem they are essentially coups, revenge and crimes of war. There is no underlying secret behind them but the will to conquer and murder.

Fire Emblem? WTH? Want do you mean characters dont die? They do die, only like a couple of characters leave the field cuz of the plot cuz they cant die to progress story. Classic mode? That one easy beginner mode if thats wat your talking about is in one FE game, and i dont even think 20% of users use that mode. Nintendo lets studios do wat they want, look at Bayo2. Everything with nintendo isnt a kiddy game or in some people's case downgraded from Mature games. RE Revelation was the best RE of 2012 (this includes a main game RE6) and they didn't take away deaths/blood/zombies/etc. If nintendo did acquire them, games like Persona will remain the same. TBH i rather them stay third party since Persona=Sony and SMT=Nintendo, but if nintendo gets them then buy a 3DS/WiiU to play their games

^^agreed

but that's just war. War iswn't inherently a dark topic. It can be dark of course, but dark is a little deeper than that. Like, for example if there wasa  significant portion of the game where a character was tortured.

To give you a better idea,

Fire Emblem is to Drunken Master as
Persona is to Old Boy

FE is to the godfather as
P is to goodfellas

FE is to Henry the VIIIth as
P is to Game of Thrones

FE is to fight club as
P is to suicide club

FE is to Hunger games as
P is to Battle Royale

What I'm getting at is fire emblem tends to deal with adversarial conflicts in a very classical way: enemies bent on conquering, ruling...etc. Brigands, thieves, etc. This is very classic. Loss and death and tradgedy and all that.

Persona has all that but is also much more psychologically focussed. It has to do more with inner turmoil, madness, fear, killing oneself, deconstruction...again, not in snippets but the entire narratives of the story.

I mean maybe you disagree, but would you say final fantasy tactics is as dark as Berserk?
I don't even know if I would say that FE is darker than fft.