I've never really thought that much about jrpg sales before, only having thought that games like the Final Fantasy series must have terrific sales numbers because they seem to be one of the only game series consistently mentioned across all message boards.  And when I look at FF numbers it is true that several of games in that series have what I would consider to be great sales figures.

     However, lately, I've started to look at the sales figures for jrpgs besides just FF or DQ games, and I'm seeing that the majority don't have sales in the millions.  In fact, most seem to not even reach a million in sales.  I find this quite shocking having thought it must be a very popular genre.  Certainly every time you come to a gaming message board much of the conversations revolve around which jrpgs are coming out for which systems, so it is surprising to me to see games like Persona or Tales or Valkyrie Chronicles have less than 500,000  sales after all the accolades and talk that has been spent on them.

      It makes me wonder what is considered a good sales number for the typical jrpg and how much money do these developers spend on these games that would seem to take so much effort to make especially in the writing of the stories, dialogues, sometimes voice acting, music, and otherworldly graphics that one typically finds in these games?

     It seems to me as an outsider that many of these studios must be spending money developing games that they know they will never really see any kind of profit from even though I know that that is surely not the case.

     Are there any opinions on this topic or answers to these questions out there in VGChartz land?

Well, devs should learn by now NOT to make JRPGs 360 exclusive.

It's probably pretty cheap and quick to take a "could have been on the PS2 jrpg", use the Unreal engine and toss it on the 360.

Why? The exclusives are selling well. Unless you can prove they are losing money, your claim it's a bad system for them is suspect.

I kinda go by this:

For a normal non FF,DQ, Pokemon, KH RPG:

less than 100k - Terrible
200k - Bad
300k - Mediocre
500k - Decent
750k - Good
1000k - Great
1.5 mil - Awesome
2 mil - Fantastic


Any greater than that just sells amazing. This is just my personal chart, but it'll vary from game to game and budget to budget.

a fast search on vgchartz shows that a lot of jrpgs don't reach a million. For example, any of Namco's tales game are below 1 million except the gamecube one. Then, you've got suikoden that doesn't seem to do 1 million either. You get rare instant of JRPGs that sells well, such as FF, DQ or even kingdom hearts.

Fixed

I think jRPGs are being discussed so much everywhere because it's a very hardcore-oriented genre. And we all know what kind of people do visit gaming forums.

About sales, how I see it (worldwide):

< 300.000 = bad
300.000 - 450.000 = so-so
450.000 - 650.000 = normal
650.000 - 999.999 = good
1 million+ = extremely good

And I dont think jRPGs cost much to make since they usually dont have good graphics or anything. The only expensive thing is probably CGI movies.

Well it depends

everyone keeps calling the 360 JRPG's success's

when Valkyria Chronicles has actually outsold TOV worldwide despite being niche & a new IP

+ WHite Knight Chronicles is looking to do about DOUBLE what 360 JRPG's did.

so I guess that means 150K = success

then the ratings go up from there

Valkyria Chronicles has the advantage of being on the PlayStation 3, where in the Japan (that's region where JRPGs seem to sell the most), the system has more 2x the userbase the 360 has. And it has been released in the Others region, whereas ToV has not, and probably never will. The Lost Remnant is selling well, it's at about 500k.

ToV is at 280k. 360 owners suck ..