BTW, I've also got Infinite Undiscovery, which is about as JRPG as you can get. I got away from it to finish a couple of games, but I'll get back to it some day. I'm willing to bet it follows the pattern though.
Wow, good point. I never really thought about it much, but that does seem to be a trend of sorts (some exceptions here and there of course). I actually really enjoy endings that aren't necessarily "happy" (I really enjoyed the endings of the games you listed), but I can see how that might be an issue. In fact, endings in general for some JRPGs can be pretty frustrating. Spoiler In my playthrough of SMT:Nocturne, I didn't particularly care for any of the paths you were supposed to take...so I did nothing...which meant I didn't get to fight the final boss and I received a very anti-climatic ending. This can occur in some of the other SMT games IIRC, although fortunately, I didn't go down those paths.
Short article in PSXtreme that points out the lack of Rpg these days. http://www.psxextreme.com/feature/388.html
I play JRPGs mainly for the story. I mean, it's kind of pointless to play one without it, considering you might as well just play a normal action game or a dungeon crawling western RPG fare. And that's really lacking with the recent games. PS1 and PS2 to a certain extent had much better choices of games that would make me lose sleep over. Although part of that may just be growing up.
I was really embarrassed with Kingdom Hearts. I played it, got to the very end right before the final boss fight, but didn't realize I was finally at the end. I put that game down for months, then one day after having already restarted the whole thing, decided what the hell and go open the old one. I walk through the freaking door, and am at the boss. I was pissed at myself. Have you ever played FFXI? It was the first game I ever bought for 360, but didn't realize I needed to pay for Live and PlayOnline, so I've never even had the chance to play it. I'm scared I'll be hooked on it and pay $10/month just to play it.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciated the endings for what they were, I just look at it from an American POV and think, "Man, that's a letdown." I invest 40, 60, 80 hours in a game, I want my character to at least get the girl, if not end up the ruler of the entire galaxy.
can't really afford to pick up any new games so I popped in FF 9 over the break and it was utterly fantastic.
Hey RC curious how many Jrpgs do you own? For me it's FF2(Snes version), FF anthology, FF7, FF8, FFX, FFX2, FFXI, FF12 Suikoden 2,3,4,5 Persona 3 FES, P4 Valkyrie Profile 2 Star Ocean 3 Odin Sphere(Greatest Hit) Chrono Trigger Snes (lost) Phantasy Star Online Zelda Ocarina of Time (I played a lot more rpgs but this is what I have.) Basically FF and Suikoden would be system sellers for me. I liked Tales of the Abyss a lot and I want to play Vesperia but I don't want a new gen console because of the lack of quality rpgs. Persona and Tales games are getting there in terms of series I would buy religiously.
I generally play a LOT more JRPGs than I actually own (especially right now, due to lost/traded-in games). Off the top of my head: FF7, FF8, FFX, FFXII SMT: Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga 1, Persona 3 FES, Persona 4 Shadow Hearts Covenant Xenogears (think I might have lost this somewhere ) Xenosaga 1 Dark Cloud 2 Chrono Cross If you want to count these as JRPGs Disgaea 1, Disgaea 3 Valkyria Chronicles Might be forgetting some, but I think that's mostly it. I used to only rent games, so I don't have a really good collection of SNES/PS1 games.
How are portable rpg sales RC Cola? I was thinking maybe Japanese developers realized it's worth it more to make rpgs for portable systems. Crisis Core sold 350,000 copies in Japan. In March 2008, Crisis Core sold 301,600 copies upon its first month of release in the United States, behind the sales of God of War: Chains of Olympus, which sold 340,500 copies, making Crisis Core the second best-selling game for the PSP during the month of March and the sixth best-selling game overall. FF3 (DS) has sold 990,000 units in Japan and 460,000 units in North America. As of August 8, 2008, it has sold 480,000 units in Europe. As of August 8, 2008, Revenant Wings has sold 1.04 million units worldwide, with 540 thousand units sold in Japan, 220 thousand units in North America, and 280 thousand in Europe. It was the best-selling Japanese console game in the week of its release, then the second best-selling in the following week. As of July 9, 2008, FFIV(DS) has sold 612,044 copies in Japan. Worldwide it has sold 1,074,108 copies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_DS_video_games All those are S.E examples though. I wonder how the new Suikoden game for the DS will do? It's getting rave reviews. It's been 3 years since a Suikoden game and they decide to make it on a portable console sigh. The Monster Hunter series is selling like hotcakes in Japan not sure about the U.S
They're decent, although it is kind of tough to compare. A lot of the games that sell well have "Final Fantasy" or something like that (Pokemon, Mario & Luigi, etc.) in their name. Every game listed in your post fits that description for the most part. I'm guessing a HD FF spin-off/remake would probably sell >200K here in the US, assuming it was at least somewhat decent. Original JRPGs are a bit more of a mixed bag. First of all, there aren't many on handhelds from what I can tell, although still a lot more than the 360/PS3. The best I can think of off the top of my head is The World Ends With You, which apparently did really good according to SE's expectations (although it was <150K). The few others I checked out didn't seem to do too well, although few actually have US sales data (which usually means it didn't sell very much). I might be missing some games, but I'm not really too sure handheld JRPGs are doing that much better. Of course, this is looking just at US data. If you want to include Japanese sales, then things would be looking better. And yeah, Monster Hunter generally does well only in Japan.
RC those numbers you quoted for the US market are not enough to even get a game funded these days. While 3-400k may seem like a lot, it is a drop in the bucket for RPG funding. DD
Of course. But those are only US numbers, and given that I'm talking about JRPGs, these games usually do at least as well (if not much better) in Japan (plus a little in Europe). That would more or less put these games at 1M+ (some possibly around 1.5M-2M depending on how popular they are in Japan). AFAIK (and I might be wrong) that is usually enough to get a decent profit, unless productions costs are insanely high. But the only game that would probably fit that category is Final Fantasy, and it would probably sell 5M-6M in all. And to be honest...some lower-budget JRPGs probably could get by on that (Persona 4 is the best selling SMT game I think, and it is probably at ~500K worldwide). Again, I think that is pretty good for the "lesser known" games in a genre. Don't care to do the math, but I'd be curious to see how that might compare to shooters today.
Posted these in the NPD thread, but I'll post them here too (just the JRPGs though): If legit, these are through January 09. Several games are a little better than what I expected. And... Awesome.
So I bought Oblivion (GOYE) and after playing a bit and reading some guide infoI realize this game is bigger than Fallout 3. Same gameplay as well. Looks like fun though.
OT, but I would enjoy a (preferably TES) game as big as Daggerfall. 62K+ square miles, compared to 16 square miles in Oblivion. I think it took like a week (real-time) to walk from one end of the world to the other. Yeah...that is WAY too big, but I still enjoyed that aspect of Daggerfall.
You know, it just occurred to me that I should further qualify this statement... I would say Xenosaga 3 is/was really, really good, and could possibly be mentioned in the same stratosphere as FFX, but for one small problem: appreciating it is fairly dependent on playing the first two games, which really weren't as good. Even saying that, though, the cupboard for JRPGs has been relatively bare since PS1.
Story-wise, it was definitely strong. As long as the gameplay was solid, I'd probably agree with you. Probably be up there with FFX, FFXII, and Persona 4 as the best of the PS2 generation IMO.
Maybe we all just have to admit that Square used to have groups of geniuses pumping out these fun, deep, epic games . . . . and now they don't. Maybe its the nostalgia factor, as others have mentioned, but does anyone seriously see any of these companies making a JRPG that can compare to the FF7 / FF8 / Chrono Cross / Xenogears days?
