A quick post-mortem on some of the big JRPGs in the US, by system:

wow, only FF does even decently well, no wonder we see lack of jrpgs, i guess most of the american people like shooters and thats it......

Thats pretty sad mr stick, i cant believe how low those are

I agree with your general point, but you're badly overstating your point here. You can hardly say "no Japanese RPGs have sold over 500k copies", and then ignore no less than eight different Final Fantasy games that have done exactly that (FF6-12, FF Tactics). Here's some other Japanese RPGs that have sold over 500k copies in America that mrstickball didn't list previously:

PS2
Kingdom Hearts      3.45 million
Final Fantasy X       2.75 million
Kingdom Hearts II  2.02 million
Final Fantasy X-2    1.82 million
Final Fantasy XII    1.68 million

You can't just ignore PS2 sales if taking this stance, because clearly at least SOME Japanese RPGs are selling, and doing monster numbers. The two Kingdom Hearts games were also huge hits, which definitely fit the category. Even Nintendo's first-party offerings do pretty well in America:

Nintendo
Paper Mario 2         1.23 million
Super Paper Mario  740k (ongoing)
Paper Mario            580k
Final Fantasy CC    580k

I'm not even going to look at the sales for handhelds, where Square (and others) are doing a mint repackaging old RPGs for the GBA/PSP/DS. (This is also ignoring Pokemon, which has always sold well.) And sales well over 500k for Final Fantasy 6 and Super Mario RPG were certainly not "staggeringly appalling", especially given the smaller overall market during the SNES era. Dragon Quest has always been a bomb in the American market, but you can't generalize beyond that to include ALL Japanese RPGs.

Incidentally, I think that this only strengthens the notion that Blue Dragon has a good chance to hit the 1 million mark. I'm not sure if it will happen by this Christmas, but it *should* happen over the game's total lifetime.

well i have to ask you one thing: Are we talking about 1 million sold or 1 million shipped. I have no doubt it will make 1 million shipped, but 1 million sold..... it will be close.

I think a lot hinges on the drop off next week in the US. If its a large drop to say 25-30k i would say its not possible, if its quite a nice drop off to say 50-60k i think it has a pretty good chance, also it depends how well it does in Europe, probably the worst of the three (US, Japan, Europe) because of smaller user base.

the mario + luigi games both have sold quite alot, and are jrpgs

 The same for Europe :s. I guess the translation costs are to high to have enough profit for the game outside Japan.

I was unable to post the full numbers before VGC died, and have been unable to get the rest of the chart done till......now.

I know there are multiple games that did over 500k - I posted that statement before I got the numbers.

But either way, it still shows that in the US, JRPGs aren't always selling that great. I put some of the #s up to show how to compare Blue Dragon to other million-seller JRPGs.

Its priced $20 below other 360 games right now, pretty odd to see that. I would say it will sell over 1mil.

Well Blue Dragon is becoming part of the "Platinum Collection" here in Japan in November, so that should boost sales a bit probably.

 Blue Dragon Platinum Collection

I already have my copy from the Blue Dragon Xbox 360 bundle I picked up a few months back. :)