I'm a North American gamer and the boards I frequent generally love the Gothic series. However Gothic 3 really has only two things going against it and they are really huge. The game basically requires way to steep system requirements and the game is too buggy. As a self admitted Gothicfanboy, I upgraded my system and deal with the almost daily crashes. And I still love this game. But asking someone new to the series to deal with this is not reasonable.
If you want to broaden the fan base you at least have to come out with a game that most gamers can run on their rig. And I believe PB went way farther than they had to, graphic wise, to win over new gamers. Additionally games can have some bugs when they come out without too much flack, but there shouldn't be any doubt this game could have stayed in the oven a bit longer. Heck, I was expecting a March 2007 release. Could you imagine if the game would have been released relatively bug free, the typical rating would have been somewhere in the 90s.
To me this is the Gothic series in a nut shell: I was exploring the backwoods of Silden and tried to find a mountain route into Monastery. After jumping up some hills and taking a chance on a very shaky cliff ledge I ended up in a high altitude meadow. It was late night and off in the near distance I can make out the ruins of a castle. After taking only two or three steps I found some Kings Sorrell. There were other herbs but no monsters or animals. But it was still scary as the castle had no bed and I had to do my exploring in the dark.
Now, anyone who's played a Gothic game knows the sense of exhilaration you get when you come across such a location. It's just like you beat a boss in some video game. It's a total sense of accomplishment that you just can't find in any other RPG. Oblivion came close, but that's it, they came close. The Oblivion living world is no better than Gothic "2". (BTW, I love the ES series and loved Oblivion)
The N/A audience is demanding for it hard core products, while the higher selling casual games typically get a big pass.