it is, eventough some games sell millions they are still not mainstream and don't have the mass appeal as some online games and local multiplayer games

it is, eventough some games sell millions they are still not mainstream and don't have the mass appeal as some online games and local multiplayer games

Nothing you have said about Dragon Quest matters. It's still not niche in that one country, and that one country happens to give it enough sales to make it a massive franchise overall. I'm not even sure what your point was with Final Fantasy. So it WAS niche a long time ago? So what? How is that even relevant to the conversation? It has managed to become one of the largest franchises ever since FF VII and it has done that simply by throwing out more traditional JRPGs. Pokemon did get big through cross promotion. It isn't the first product to try it, and it won't be the last. It has somehow made gamers of all persuasions take notice, and that is through addictive gameplay. Believe it or not, every Pokemon customer on Earth is not buying in just because of a set of cards and a TV program.

Let me guess what your excuse is for Kingdom Hearts. It has Disney characters so it doesn't count either right?

So let me see. There are RPGs outside of the aformentioned that have passed 500,000 sales. There are some that have passed 750,000. Some have even broken a million. Yet, this is a niche market? So what exactly would you call the SHMUP genre, where games regularly fail to break 100,000? Also if JRPGs are a niche genre, what genres would you consider to not be niche?

I think I will put the notion out that sales/popularity don't reflect whether or not a game or genre is niche or not. This is obviousdly an argument that we can go back and forth on for days, and it gets worse if you try to debate whether or not a game is a niche TARGET as opposed to niche or popular SUCCESS.

I propose for the sake of argument that we define niche to be focused to 1 particular taste and the group thustly represented.
Next, is whether or not we are affirming this notion based on proposal or perception. or to say it in laymans terms who the company made the game for vs. who actually bought it.

If we are to say that sales defines the title, than the RPG genre is considered niche if pretty much, for the most part, only RPG fans buy RPG games. There could be 10 million RPG fans, so Final Fantasy XIII could sell 8 million copies and still be niche.

..... At this point I forgot where this was leading to and I gotta get back to work, so I'll just say that.. yeah unless we actually knoe the profile of the vast majority of those who buy it than we wont knoe, so elongated debate is useless, however most of us have an opinion and that is fine of course, but I guess I just wanted to say high sales doesn't mean it isn't niche.
sorry for rambling.

It's not niche at all, as some people already pointed out. In fact it's one of the biggest genres. It doesn't matter that the genre is very toploaded towards a few franchises. Besides there are enough RPGs outside the big series that have good sales. Tales of Symphonia sold a million.

The only RPG I condider niche is SRPG.

The point of the post was to show why those series have managed to become mainstream and therefore shouldn't be used as evidence of the health or size of the genre.  The genre is primarily niche because the highly successful series have generally relied on one-off exogeneous events that cannot be replicated to become successful. I know highly confusing concept.

That there are highly successful games within the genre doesn't preclude it from being a niche genre. Plenty of niche genres in movies, music, television and videogames have had crossover hits without making the genre any less niche. If the success cannot be replicated, and in this case it cannot, then the fact that there is the odd success story should not distort the underlying truth that JRPGs are not all that popular.

So where does the invisible line get drawn in sales that says JRPGs are niche because they fall under it? Is it one million? Two million? You must have some number in your head that this genre of games is falling underneath. Also, like I previously asked, what genres are not niche?

games selling 10 M are rare... FFs and pokemon and WoW sell in that region... so it's definitely not niche...

In the last few years RPG has passed sports and become the third biggest genre in unit sales (check the milly sellers list for example: http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php ). This is true at least on the Playstation and Xbox.

1. Shooters
2. Action
3. RPG
4. Sports & racing

This is thanks to the huge breakthrough of the WRPG genre on consoles (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Fable, KOTOR).

If you add Nintendo Wii it becomes harder for me to make a ranking, but perhaps (overall on PS360Wii):

1. Platform
2. Shooters
3. Action
4. RPG
5. Sports

In a way I still understand why many want to classify RPGs as a niche genre. Everyone know that these games still have a relatively steep lurning curve, and it's no coincidence that on gamings sites such as this the discussions about RPGs are very common while no one talks about sports & racing games.