How's the economic health of the console JRPG and is the genre's future looking bright or not?

[Piston]

But looking at the Media Create thread, does 112.902 copies total sales of BD2 really justify publishers' decision to invest in the genre? Those numbers seem incredibly small - or has something changed?

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JRPGs outside of Dragon Quest tend to perform much better in the west than in Japan itself. Bravely Default II is low on stock currently which may have hurt its physical sales a bit, so some of its sales are being re-directed to the eShop. This has happened with quite a few SE RPGs over the past few years, I think Trials of Mana, Octopath, and the first Bravely Default are all examples.

Selling 150-200k in Japan isn't a dire situation for Bravely Default II, it's what was expected, maybe a little lower. It'll be a million-seller worldwide for sure.

 

[AnimaRize]

I think they are referring to the Wii/360/PS3 generation, where a lot of smaller Japanese devs seemed to struggle with HD development at first. I think it kind of ignores the DS/PSP, though.

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yes the ds was doing fine but outside japan the psp was not. Games that did have followings westward lost a lot of people when going to psp, games like valkyria chronicles ended up taking such losses they decided to not release the next entry in the series in the west, until the reboot on ps4

 

[Deleted member 56266]

I see this recurring statement, can you explain the differences between previous generation and the one now? The genre didn't perform well during the PS4/Xbone/WiiU era or what do you mean? What happened and why is it doing better now?

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I said generation before last meaning ps3 generation where there was a dearth of good jrpgs for a long time (on console). Compared to then right now is a JRPG dream era especially with the Switch.

 

[lightning16]

yes the ds was doing fine but outside japan the psp was not. Games that did have followings westward lost a lot of people when going to psp, games like valkyria chronicles ended up taking such losses they decided to not release the next entry in the series in the west, until the reboot on ps4

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Yeah that's fair. I was mostly talking quality for that statement. A number of good JRPGs sold horribly on PSP outside of Japan and it's a shame.

 

[Samiya]

I said generation before last meaning ps3 generation where there was a dearth of good jrpgs for a long time (on console). Compared to then right now is a JRPG dream era especially with the Switch.

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well we are still in that generation, its the transitional period, i am talking more of the Ps3/xbox360/wii generation. and yes it is better than it was then. while there were a lot of jrpg's being released at the time not all of them were good even the ones that were ended up not selling well. the damage was really done that it took well into the ps4 generation and the start of the switch generation to before even getting back to what the ps2 generation was. It was so bad for jrpg's that Xbone had no exclusive jrpgs and if it got one it was a 3rd party triple A final fantasy one

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But didn't a lot of devs go under back then or simply moved on to mobile because of the HD era? I understand that the big companies weathered the storm and are now doing much better than back in the HD console era, but that rough period did have lasting detrimental effects on the genre because smaller and medium-sized companies either went under or moved to mobile only in order to survive. And is it me or weren't the sales numbers of JRPGs still higher back then and they haven't reached the same amount ever since? Or am I wrong in that impression?

 

[Rask]

I think they are referring to the Wii/360/PS3 generation, where a lot of smaller Japanese devs seemed to struggle with HD development at first. I think it kind of ignores the DS/PSP, though.

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Yeah, fair point on portables. I wasn't including them when looking at consoles. Otherwise, yeah I was thinking the PSWii60 Era. From Square's infamous "HD towns are too hard" to Operation Rainfall, you can point to a few different things to show how desperate we were all feeling about console JRPGs in those days. I don't a single JRPG console dev made it through unscathed. Today we can point to so many excellent and well-received JRPS like Persona, FFXIV, Fire Emblem, Trails, Nier, etc. Back then we were doing everything we could to get excited about.... Infinite Undiscovery? Eternal Sonata? Not that they were terrible games, but compared to today those were slim pickings.

Yeah, I'm cherry picking a bit, but my point is I feel better about the genre/market today than I have in a loooong ass time.

 

[Nevermeltice]

Is this where I tell people to buy Bravely Default 2?

As for the question in the OP, I think it comes down to how a console is marketed. When you think of a PS5, usually those high-budget triple A titles come to mind. Why would you shell out half a grand on a console and get indie games? The consoles themselves are considered tech powerhouses that run high-fidelity games and oftentimes it'll be in dissonance with what most JRPGs have to offer.

Switch is the perfect console for JRPGs to come out on because it doesn't make much economic sense to pour millions upon milions of dollars on a game that'll only sell a couple millions because JPRGs are not synonym with power display anymore. FF7R might be the only exception and even if it looks expensive, it didn't move as many copies as other triple A titles. High production values have shifted our preference.

Now, the question is: should developers only striver for JRPGs with high production values in order to capitalize on this new wave of consoles or should they scale back and release a game on a platform where it'll most likely find some success? If developers have a vision, it's absolutely fine to release smaller titles on a console like Switch where it will find an audience. And considering that Switch is selling like hotcakes, I feel like the future is brighter than ever.

 

[Deleted member 4090]

JRPGs are in a great position as the handheld and home lineages have merged. A bunch of franchises or developers (Atelier, Xeno, Fire Emblem) have had their best selling entries recently, and there's a wide variety of games being focused on fewer systems.

I think the OP is kind of ill-founded, as Bravely Default 2 is going to easily cross 1M based on word of mouth and strong legs. Truly the best job/class system to appear in a JRPG. The game does so much to avoid common pitfalls in classes and passives, and every passive just makes my mind swirl thinking about potential builds. They aren't just basic stat boosts, but interesting little nuggets to synergy across the 24 well-designed classes. The difficulty curve is perfect for giving the player challenges that really test whatever crazy builds they may come up with.

 

[lightning16]

Yeah, fair point on portables. I wasn't including them when looking at consoles. Otherwise, yeah I was thinking the PSWii60 Era. From Square's infamous "HD towns are too hard" to Operation Rainfall, you can point to a few different things to show how desperate we were all feeling about console JRPGs in those days. I don't a single JRPG console dev made it through unscathed. Today we can point to so many excellent and well-received JRPS like Persona, FFXIV, Fire Emblem, Trails, Nier, etc. Back then we were doing everything we could to get excited about.... Infinite Undiscovery? Eternal Sonata? Not that they were terrible games, but compared to today those were slim pickings.

Yeah, I'm cherry picking a bit, but my point is I feel better about the genre/market today than I have in a loooong ass time.

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Yeah I agree with all this. The home console market was terrible for JRPG fans during this time. Some standout games of course (Radiant Dawn, Xenoblade, Tales of Graces, Final Fantasy XIII-2, The Last Story, and some I haven't played yet like Lost Odyssey and Pandora's Tower), but yeah in terms of quality it's probably the worst for any gen going back to at least the SNES days. It's way better recently, over the past 5 years in particular.

 

[werezompire]

*almost* a million copies. xenogears, star ocean 2, star ocean 3, valkyrie profile, arc the lad 2, tales of destiny 2, chrono cross, saga frontier 2, Brave Fencer Musashi, just to name some of them who were between ~700k to a 1 million.

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This is what I could find:
Tales of Destiny - Over 500k in Japan, 1.1 million worldwide
Valkyrie Profile - 636k in Japan, 700k worldwide
Star Ocean 2 - 724k in Japan, 1.1 mil worldwide
Star Ocean 3 - 533k in Japan, 1.4 mil worldwide if you add the Director's Cut
Xenogears - 910k in Japan, 1.2 million worldiwde
Saga Frontier 2 - 675k Japan
Arc the Lad 2 - Can't find data
Brave Fencer Musashi - 649k Japan
Chrono Cross - 850k Japan, 1.5 million worldwide

Most of these are Squaresoft or Square-Enix games though. Any decline seems to be mostly attributed to Square-Enix doing far fewer low and mid-budget JRPGs.

Persona, Fire Emblem, Atelier, and Xenoblade are all JRPG series that have seen noticeable increases in sales over the past decade. Falcom's stuff (Ys, Trails) seems to be fairly consistent with their sales. Octopath was a surprise hit for SE. I don't really feel like the genre is in trouble at the moment, even though I'd love to see more mid-budget games coming out.

 

[Samiya]

This is what I could find:
Tales of Destiny - Over 500k in Japan, 1.1 million worldwide
Valkyrie Profile - 636k in Japan, 700k worldwide
Star Ocean 2 - 724k in Japan, 1.1 mil worldwide
Star Ocean 3 - 533k in Japan, 1.4 mil worldwide if you add the Director's Cut
Xenogears - 910k in Japan, 1.2 million worldiwde
Saga Frontier 2 - 675k Japan
Arc the Lad 2 - Can't find data
Brave Fencer Musashi - 649k Japan
Chrono Cross - 850k Japan, 1.5 million worldwide

Most of these are Squaresoft or Square-Enix games though. Any decline seems to be mostly attributed to Square-Enix doing far fewer low and mid-budget JRPGs.

Persona, Fire Emblem, Atelier, and Xenoblade are all JRPG series that have seen noticeable increases in sales over the past decade. Falcom's stuff (Ys, Trails) seems to be fairly consistent with their sales. Octopath was a surprise hit for SE. I don't really feel like the genre is in trouble at the moment, even though I'd love to see more mid-budget games coming out.

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The point is that they were not "big series from Nintendo, Square, or Enix" that you asked for. And the decline attributed to Square-Enix doing far fewer low and mid-budget JRPGs is basically the motivation of the thread: that the sales are in some ways lower and therefore presumably don't cut it or justify the more costly modern development these days.

With data, I used this btw: https://sites.google.com/site/gamedatalibrary/game-search

 

[werezompire]

Chrono Cross is a sequel to one of the best-selling SNES games of all time (In the Top 20 Best-selling of all-time for any company, and it's the best-selling Squaresoft SNES game that doesn't involve Final Fantasy or Mario), but point taken on the rest. I think now, in general, games are much more likely to explode or bomb with less in-between. Whereas before, there were a lot of JRPGs that were able to sit around the half-million mark, I feel like now, either you're selling under 200k or you're selling well over a million.

 

[MrWindUpBird]

How do you figure? The best situation would be to scale the game down like we already saw with DQXI, that way you can continue satisfying your old consumer base while gaining new ones.

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Dragon Quest XI wasn't just a simple scaled down port though. SE pretty much rebuilt the game from scratch for the Switch is obviously much more time consuming and costly than, say, Trials of Mama or Falcon's games.

 

[Mr.Deadshot]

I think most console JRPGs outside of Final Fantasy will remain more budget affairs like Ys IX, so even if they don't set the world on fire, they'll do well enough to justify their cost.

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Sadly, this. High-budget JRPGs will be Square-Enix only and these go more and more into the action-genre.

 

[Ovvv]

Dragon Quest XI wasn't just a simple scaled down port though. SE pretty much rebuilt the game from scratch for the Switch is obviously much more time consuming and costly than, say, Trials of Mama or Falcon's games.

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Sure, then that was a really poor example by me. Why'd they go about remaking the game instead of down-scaling? I know stuff was added, but wouldn't it have made sense to just make the version with more stuff the original version?

 

[Samiya]

Chrono Cross is a sequel to one of the best-selling SNES games of all time (In the Top 20 Best-selling of all-time for any company, and it's the best-selling Squaresoft SNES game that doesn't involve Final Fantasy or Mario), but point taken on the rest. I think now, in general, games are much more likely to explode or bomb with less in-between. Whereas before, there were a lot of JRPGs that were able to sit around the half-million mark, I feel like now, either you're selling under 200k or you're selling well over a million.

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Yeah you made that excellent post a while back that I recently had to quote. It really touches on what I find is missing after the PS3/360/Wii era: the mid-tier / AA game that sits in the sweet spot between indie and AAA. So much experimentation while also having more lavish presentation and characterization thanks to a higher budget and more staff working on it. Here's the great post you wrote:

I miss the quantity of mid-budget games. Back in the PS2 era, games came out rapidly and it felt like most of them had a decent budget. Atlus alone released SEVEN of their own RPGs and several published games on the PS2 era in NA and they generally ranged in quality from good to amazing.

Now, it feels like most long-running JRPG series are dead, and the ones that aren't get maybe one new installment a generation. For games that aren't made on a shoestring budget, you've got your DQ & FF titles and maybe a new Persona every 5-10 years and the occasional one-of like Ni no Kuni or what Mistwalker was doing in the 360 generation. For mid-budget titles, you've got Tales and Trails and that's about it. Even with Square-Enix, you get DQ & FF on the high end, and stuff like Octopath Traveler & Bravely Default on the low end, and there's not really anything in that mid-budget range.

EDIT: I'm sure I'm missing some, but here's a list of JRPG series that had at least one installment on the PS2 that was localized into English. I've put a * next to games that had multiple PS2 entries. Future generations just can't compete with this kind of quantity:

*.Hack series
*Ar Tonelico
*Arc the Lad
*Atelier Iris
Breath of Fire
*Dark Cloud
*Disgaea
Dragon Quest
*Final Fantasy
Front Mission
*Grandia
*Growlanser
Jade Cocoon
*Kingdom Hearts
Legaia
*Mana-Khemia
Metal Saga
*SaGa
Sakura Wars
*Shadow Hearts
*Devil Summoner
*Digital Devil Saga
SMT
*Persona
*Shining
Star Ocean
*Suikoden
*Tales of
Valkyrie Profile
*Wild Arms
*Xenosaga
Ys

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[werezompire]

Sadly, this. High-budget JRPGs will be Square-Enix only and these go more and more into the action-genre.

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I think Atlus is getting there. Persona 5 had a noticeably higher budget than their other games and it sold like crazy. I'm expecting Persona 6 to have a full-blown AAA budget. Wouldn't surprise me if Project Re:Fantasy did as well.

 

[Quinton]

I can't speak very well about the financials. Maybe somewhat better than most, but not enough to chime in when there are people here who know them inside and out. I'm not one of those people.

Qualitatively, and anecdotally, I've been far more pleased with the state of JRPGs since about 2016 or so. Things have come around in a big way. Gone are the days of one title a year calling my name. Admittedly, this is perhaps exacerbated by my modest ties with the industry now. But that's a far more recent situation. Besides, continuing the anecdotal lens here, I have friends almost entirely detached from daily internet life who are expressing similar sentiments. It feels like we've been in the midst of a resurgence for years.

 

[LostCauseUnite!]

I think Atlus is getting there. Persona 5 had a noticeably higher budget than their other games and it sold like crazy. I'm expecting Persona 6 to have a full-blown AAA budget. Wouldn't surprise me if Project Re:Fantasy did as well.

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SMTV already showed it had a lot higher budget too.

Though... that's also an upgrade from the 3DS lol, but still it looked or seemed to look a lot better.

 

[werezompire]

SMTV already showed it had a lot higher budget too.

Though... that's also an upgrade from the 3DS lol, but still it looked or seemed to look a lot better.

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We've seen so little of SMTV, that I'm not sure what kind of budget we're looking at.

I will say that Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE seemed like it had a bigger budget than their previous games. So between that & Persona 5, I feel like their budgets are trending upwards.

 

[LostCauseUnite!]

We've seen so little of SMTV, that I'm not sure what kind of budget we're looking at.

I will say that Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE seemed like it had a bigger budget than their previous games. So between that & Persona 5, I feel like their budgets are trending upwards.

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By virtue of being on an HD console and what *squints* seemed like a game in HD(?) compared to the 3DS titles of SMTIV/Apocalypse

BUT I will admit looking back at the trailer again just now, I am not sure if that is game footage or not since it didn't have it listed on the bottom, but it could be just the CGI, so my bad. It truly is an unknown quantity right now.

Speaking of SMT.... I need to check up on Nocturne for NA release....

 

[Zen Hero]

I think it's been great, there's a lot of quality games recently. The bigger mainstream series are finding increased success, and I also appreciate how midbudget games have been doing all right as well. I can think of Square Enix doing pretty good work in the midbudget space with Bravely Default II, SaGa Scarlet Grace, Octopath Traveler, etc. As long as a variety of games can survive I think we're in a good place.

 

[Goldenroad]

I don't think most game publishers are truly open enough with their financials for us to to determine how profitable their games are, but I don't understand why the ones who are making them, would keep making JRPG's if they weren't financially viable. And they seem to keep making them.

 

[Dyno]

At least for me. Very few of them actually appeal to me anymore and outside of FF I haven't actually finished any since the ps3 or early ps4. I still like the formula in general, but the stories and settings aren't grabbing me, and othes the battle system just feels a bit slow to push through. I need a turbo mode or options for shortened sequences.

 

[poplin]

Barring FF remakes, I dont anticipate too many more AAA JRPGs ever coming out, market just isnt there for them. Switch will likely be the go to platform for the more indie / AA titles, where 300,000 units in Japan is good enough.

Sadly, doubt the golden age of the mid to late 90s will ever come again. The design of JRPGs just feels archaic now that we've moved to more engaging gameplay. Still a good fit for mobile, which is why we see so many jrpgs succeeding on mobile, like brave exvius.

 

[Mr.Deadshot]

I think Atlus is getting there. Persona 5 had a noticeably higher budget than their other games and it sold like crazy. I'm expecting Persona 6 to have a full-blown AAA budget. Wouldn't surprise me if Project Re:Fantasy did as well.

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Persona 5 still didn't feel like AAA to me tbh. It's an incredibly stylish game, but nowhere near the production value of a Kingdom Hearts 3 or Final Fantasy XV IMHO.

 

[werezompire]

Persona 5 still didn't feel like AAA to me tbh. It's an incredibly stylish game, but nowhere near the production value of a Kingdom Hearts 3 or Final Fantasy XV IMHO.

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I think it's on the low end of AAA. It's an extremely long game. Every dungeon is hand-crafted, has puzzles & story events, and changes its visuals as you progress through it (sometimes multiple times). There's a large playable cast and a lot of enemies, including impressive bosses with multiple phases. There are numerous anime cutscenes throughout the game as well as a lot of voice acting. You can tell a lot of work went into fine-tuning the UI & gameplay balance.

According to wikipedia, development on Persona 5 lasted for about 5 years with a core staff of between 40-70 depending on the stage of development. At normal burn-rates, that would qualify as AAA. I'm guessing that'd be maybe $30-$50 million dollar development budget, not including marketing.

 

[Joltik]

Sure, then that was a really poor example by me. Why'd they go about remaking the game instead of down-scaling? I know stuff was added, but wouldn't it have made sense to just make the version with more stuff the original version?

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Didn't they decide to work on an upgraded version of the Unreal Engine for the Switch version that was incompatible with the older version used for the first PS4 version?