NeoElfboy posted...
although I think the real dagger has been the console fragmentation that has happened since the end of the PS2 era. RPGs in the mold of Final Fantasy were one of the most international of Japan's gaming creations (obvious blockbusters such as main Nintendo franchises aside) and there's just no slam-dunk system to make them for any more if you want to succeed internationally.
JRPGs slipping in terms of quantity and budget started happening before the end of the PS2 era, though. Shadow Hearts 3 showed signs of having a lower budget than Shadow Hearts 2, for instance. Wild ARMs 4, for all that I love the final product, clearly made some choices to make development more affordable than Wild ARMs 3, like removing the world map, and using a small collection of still-sprites for speech. The Grandia 3 team ended up being used to develop fighting games as their next two projects. And I can't really think of any stories of small independent studios springing up during that time, unless you count those funded by Microsoft like Blue Dragon.
To be fair, the same thing was happening to WRPGs around that time. A broad spectrum of WRPG developers were reduced to just Bioware and Obsidian, and I suppose Bethesda, but they were taking so much stuff from FPSs that most WRPG fans I knew at the time were starting to question whether Bethesda games even counted as RPGs anymore.
Obviously WRPGs are in a healthier place today, and there are actually more WRPG companies surfacing outside of the old 3 survivors. So...it's conceivable that the same could happen to JRPGs. The problem with a JRPG revival right now is partially just Japan--Japan game development in general is just falling way behind right now, so unless Japan gets itself sorted out or western developers pick up the JRPG torch, the JRPG genre is not well-positioned to make a comeback.
--
Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision