I think it will do fine.

That reminds me of this video ...

I don't know how accurate this video is, but I think it lays out that there were a lot more factors to Awakenings success than waifus. (okay okay, his Sword Art point is a bit exaggerative but ...)

Quite frankly, I think that it's a tad exaggerated how much waifus mean to a general audience. It's important to the game's popularity, but there are definitely other ways of attracting normies. Let's not forget that waifus are actually pretty looked down on by the "actual" general audience.

Anyways, Fates is HEAVILY undertracked on here. Just after the American launch of Fates and just before the European launch, Birthright + Conquest were already at a combined 1.84 million units sold. So considering it probably ended at 3-3.5 million, I think 3 million for Three Houses is undercutting it, even without waifus. 

Do fire emblem games sell well anyway?i would’ve thought they were more of a niche game at least in the West though never really followed their progress tbh. Three Houses may be my first fe game which is a sentiment I’ve heard a lot around variuos places online suggesting the game has the potential to attract a larger audience.

People can downplay "waifus" or whatever all they want, but Awakening was a much more character driven game with the ability to romance the cast together. That was huge factor in broadening the appeal of the series in addition to the much easier difficulty. I'm also kinda surprised that no one has mentioned Fire Emblem Heroes because that is far and away the most successful Fire Emblem game. It runs on playing with cute characters in different outfits. It wouldn't do so well if it wasn't a big factor.

J

While I believe waifus did play a part in the success of Awakening and Fates, I do agree that their impact is a bit overblown, especially in Awakening.

As someone who wanted to get into Fire Emblem, I was honestly intimidated by permadeath. With Awakening’s casual mode, I had the opportunity to grow my units without the pressure of them dying. Of course I want to play more classic now but that’s because I built confidence in myself to handle classic mode thanks to casual mode. Plus, cookie cutter or not, the characters are enduring. I love Lissa, Donnel, Lucina, Olivia, Tharja, Chrom, Inigo, Cordelia, etc. Their interactions were nice to get into and it built my resolve to see them succeed to the end.

I do get it that Fates (even though I haven’t played the three versions yet) did try too much with the children and waifus from what I heard, but I think it still succeed in what it mostly wanted to do from a story and gameplay perspective. It wouldn’t have sold close to Awakening LT if it didn’t. 

Well they’ve had several main entries on home consoles including GameCube and Wii. The only one that didn’t get one recently was Wii U. So yeah, of course they’d adapt better. 

The game will be a masterpiece, i have no doubts about that.
But yes, the style does not look to be one of mainstream appeal.

I dont share that worry.Yeah, some parts of the trailer seemed a bit rough, but other than that, the game shows a lot of promises.The gameplay looks solid and seems to have been expanded for the better, with the battles being seemingly fought by real armies now.The free roaming, should it be implemented with proper care, could be an excellent addition to the franchise, and things like the lack of relations shouldnt be a worry at this point, given that just a bit of the game was shown, and nothing seems to point otherwise.

Fire Emblem is NOT about waifus and crap like that. The contemporary Fire Emblem fanbase is a disgrace. Do people seriously play the game for *this* reason?

And even then with the Wii U, Intelligent Systems were the ones who made Paper Mario Color Splash on the Wii U so they'd have even more experience with Nintendo's home consoles than Game Freak, who pretty much have none at all apart from now with the Nintendo Switch.