Since the last console generation a lot of people have been saying that the grandiose JRPG on consoles is a dead concept and, aside from Square’s RPGs, it’s hard to dispute this claim at times.  The last couple years have seen a growing trend of more niche console JRPGs such as Atelier, Hyperdimension Neptunia etc. and as much as I love them, you can’t deny that they are very polarizing.  The console JRPG landscape used to be filled with sprawling epics such as Suikoden, Wild Arms, Lunar and the like outside of your usual Final Fantasys and Dragon Quests.  Games like this have either become a thing of the past or have been relegated to handhelds.

The dream isn’t totally dead though as last year a title called Ni No Kuni got released.  It was a collaboration between industry giants Level 5 and Studio Ghibli and it clearly had a lot of money behind it.  Instead of trying to redefine what the JRPG was to gain an audience, this title decided to do the exact opposite.  It went back to what worked in the past.  This was very much a classic 16 bit RPG with a fresh coat of paint and it was polished to perfection.

The game proceeded to release to glowing reviews but the sales numbers would tell the final story as to whether this gamble was a successful one.  Well, apparently it was as it was just announced that the title has shipped over 1 million units worldwide.  This comes off as big news because it’s more validation that if you properly build and market a JRPG it can still be successful on a bigger scale even in todays vastly different industry landscape.  Another great example of this is Xenoblade Chronicles which Nintendo had to be dragged kicking and screaming to release in the states, and then it went on and sold nearly 500,000 units.