@Mikey
Thats… the exact point I was trying to make. Fallout was niche when 1 and 2 came out (alongside the shitty spinoffs), but as soon as 3 turned the series into a mainstream hit, that’s when the fans started bitching at each other.
Fallout 1 and 2 weren’t particularly niche and sold very well, not as well as anyone hoped, but were award winning and released early in a period where RPGs were experiencing a revival. They only appear as niche because the Gaming market, especially the PC gaming market wasn’t as it was then as it is today, and console gaming wasn’t as robust as it would be by fourth generation consoles.
The main failure going for Fallout 1 was that it released during the same year as Diablo 2, which despite a weak first period of sales (180,000 to Fallout 1s 600,000), Diablo 2 would launch into 1,000,000 by year’s end
EDIT - Because I checked and it’s funny in this framework: if the trifecta of games that brought about a Renaissance in the computer RPG genre was Diablo-Fallout-Baldur’s Gate, then Baldur’s Gate was the most niche game having sales of just over 50,000 and taking a couple months to get to 500,000 despite critical praise.
And here we are with BD3