[quote name='Nirron']There's two main reasons I don't see Persona becoming really mainstream (though I did acquiesce that P3 and, subsequently Persona 4 were quite popular) and those are the art and the difficulty. Well, maybe not. Those points are more pros for Tales than negatives for SMT. Tales games are ridiculously easy (for me at least) or at least easier than Persona 3 or 4 on Easy. To get mainstream, the game has to get popular, and it seems like it's way too difficult for most people, at least Stateside, to sell great. I think the cartoony look of most Tales games gives it more mass appeal too.
That's not to say that a SMT game wouldn't do well on the 360 or PS3, but I'm willing to bet that it would sell quite a bit less than a PS2 counterpart. Oh, and unfortunately, for your last point, JRPGs seem to be diminishing more and more. People seem to be going toward WRPGs now, where they tend to be more mixtures of shooter/RPG (as ME and Fallout 3 are, though both being great games) and JRPGs as story-driven games with traditional types of combat seem to be getting fewer and fewer. I barely even see any JRPGs from companies other than Atlus or Nippon Ichi, and I try to keep my eye out for any unique JRPGs out there.[/quote]
I don't disagree that the SMT games in general are more difficult than most JRPGs, and involve quite a bit of tedious leveling, but by "popular" I meant like, how much the average gamer knows about it, even if they've never even played it.
Ask a non-JRPG gamer if they know about the Persona series, and you'll likely get a rough description that it's this RPG about high school kids and demons. Ask him about the Tales series, and you'll likely get at best, a guess that it's some long running RPG series.
I'm fairly certain even some other JRPG series like Suikoden, which hasn't had a new release in a few years, is more popular in that sense than Tales is over here.
And with Persona's recent increase in recognition, I'm willing to bet many gamers who weren't really big on JRPGs before gave P4 a shot, as opposed to ToV, which was released to relatively little fanfare.
Longtime JRPG fans (the kind who know about SMT games and their difficulty, and of Tales as well) would've likely gotten both anyway if they were fans, so it's the non-JRPGer (the kind who doesn't really know much about SMT games, but has read good things about Persona and seen the awesome art style) who would've likely boosted Persona's sales and popularity beyond that of Tales.
The difficulty of the games would've played little part in their popularity, IMHO. Maybe the non-JRPGer would've gotten turned off from it after a while cause it was too hard and sold it used or whatever, but that's besides the point.
About it selling more on PS2 than the current gen systems, well it IS the highest selling console of all time, most titles that aren't blockbuster current gen hits like MGS4, GoW, etc are likely to sell better on the PS2 than those systems.
Still, you make good points and I enjoyed reading them. Just my 2 cents on this.
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