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Xenoblade lead Tetsuya Takahashi and former Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada both previously agreed that JRPGs have a problem when it comes to overcoming big sales milestones, but they had mixed opinions when it came to a potential solution to overcome it.
Takahashi and Harada – the latter of whom might be best known for his contributions to Bandai Namco's fighting game series, but as he noted at the time, previously led marketing for the Tales of series (and went on to be general producer of Tales of Arise) – discussed this together in a 2019 4Gamer interview that's recently resurfaced on ResetEra (machine translated). Takahashi – who directed Xenogears, Xenosaga: Episode 1, and served as executive director on all the Xenoblade games – asked Harada what he thought the sales limit was for the JRPG genre, noting that he thought there was a bit of a barrier around the two to three million mark.
Harada noted that for JRPGs, passing even the one million sales mark is surprisingly difficult, with things like fighting games generally much quicker to sell. This is a hurdle that Takahashi admitted he'd been looking for a way to overcome for some time.
Pondering a potential solution, Harada suggested that perhaps the answer could be putting a focus on the latest technology, noting that players in America seem to be particularly drawn to games with cutting-edge tech – he looks to Final Fantasy 15 as an example. Takahashi, however, wasn't quite so certain, pointing to budget constraints as a barrier to this.
The Xenoblade lead went on to compare the current sales of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Monolith Soft's most recent game at the time – to other Nintendo behemoths, with Harada giving the example of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which Monolith Soft actually assisted with). They agreed that IP is a truly powerful thing when it comes to driving sales.
In the years since, it's fair to say that Xenoblade still hasn't reached the staggering highs as some of Nintendo's more mainstream franchises when it comes to sales. Since that interview, the excellent Game of the Year nominee Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was released, but in March 2023, around eight months after launch, it'd sold 1.86 million copies – not a bad number by any means, but still stuck before the two to three million barrier Takahashi spoke about, despite its critical acclaim.
As for focusing on technology, we also recently saw the launch of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition's Switch 2 version – the first in the JRPG series to get any dedicated Switch 2 enhancements. Ironically, fans quickly called it "disappointing," with visuals actually worsened in handheld mode where its upscaling has a tendency to make distant objects appear blurry. Despite launching on February 19 this year, this still hasn't been patched.
Obviously, it wasn't for this reason that Takahashi previously expressed hesitance towards going all-in on all the newest, shiniest technologies, but it's unfortunate that the studio's first attempt to capitalize on Nintendo's latest console may have had the opposite effect when it comes to drawing new players. It's not clear how many sales Xenoblade X's Switch 2 edition brought in, but sadly even the base Switch 1 version didn't seem to have stellar sales, as they weren't even mentioned in Nintendo's first financial report after its launch. To be fair, its March 2025 release date didn't give it long to rack up its number of copies sold before this, but it clearly wasn't an immediate hit on the same level of some Switch 1 games.
Monolith Soft has long been praised for its game dev wizardry in being able to get such vast, beautiful open worlds running so smoothly on the regular Switch 1, so its Switch 2 debut does feel like more of an unfortunate blip than a sign of things to come. Personally, I'm still hopeful that the devs will take these learnings on board, and if the remaining Xenoblade trilogy get enhancements, too – or better yet, if a whole new JRPG is made exclusively for the Switch 2 – the visual improvements will be a bit more, well, there.
While you're here, be sure to check out our roundup of the best JRPGs you can play today.
