Some of what you say may be true.. but honeslty.. are there as many fighters today as there was in the 16-32 bit era.. and where did all the side scrolling beat em ups go?? Like Final Fight.. there is not that many there like there used to be.. 2D Action Adventure like Ninja Gaiden.. without anything online.. nope.. and how about JRPG's// they are dead.. bottom line.. look at what are the most popular games on consoles.. Soul Caliber.. Stealth and Squad Games.. and Puzzle Games.. Strategy.. MMORPG.. Westenr RPG.. and FPS.. now let's see what are the most populer games on the computer.. take out Soul Caliber.. and you basically summerized it up... There may be side scrollers.. but are they on store sheleves?? No.. why not?? and there are not nearly as many as there used to be. other then Mario.. There may be a lot of beat em ups.. but.. well no that is not exactly true either.. Once you get past the core series.. that have been around forever.. there really is not as many... and JRPG's and Side Scrolling Beat em ups.. like Double Dragon.. etc.. are dead.. for the most part.. Bottom line.. with what is on store shelves.. once you get past dloading old games.. and some new.. there is nothing like what consoles used to be.. it is more and more like PC.. or motion/tablet/touchscreen games with each and every generation.. 

I disagree and agree with some of the things you are saying. I agree that for fighting games online is the best thing to happen because it brings it closer to the competition of playing in an arcade, and they may or may not be more popular than they were on the DC/PS2/GC/ Xbox era but they certainly are no where as popular as back in 16 bit and arcade era and I don't think they ever will be.

Also the New super mario  series is probably one of the best selling franchise of the 7th gen and thats a 2d platformer, so they can stand against "AAA" titles.

I love Beat-em ups back then, I love FPS now. Games are games, doesn't matter what genre they are the purpose is for people to have fun.

BTW: Toughest Beat-Em up is Death and Return of Superman, I still to this day can't beat that game. Just play it again a week ago.

I would say roughly since Doom came out.

No MARIO can stand against the AAA titles and maybe even DK but that doesnt extend to the rest of the genre. I cant think of a 2d platform release beside LBP series that even manage to get above 1mil let alone even getting close to the numbers that Mario puts up.

My point was never about fighters being as popular as they were in their heyday, that would be a ludicrous statement. But they are more popular than they were in the last gen. Thats a fact. Its not different than 2d platformers they are more popular than they were just last gen, but still not as popular as they were in the 16 bit era. Have you checked your XBL or PSN? Do you have access to those? thats where the beat em ups went. No one in their right mind is going to publish one of those for retail, not gonna happen. Scott Pilgrim, Turtles HD, Streets of Rage, Xmen, Simpsons, hell they jsut did a new Double Dragon and and Final FIght one, where you been? What difference does it make if it on store shelves or not? Thats irrelevant. I can still play beat em ups and fighter and even 2d plats on my current console. There just not going to be on my store shelves which IMHO is actually a step in a good direction. WRPGS and the like have nothing at all to do with those genres, unless you wanna ignore the PS2 era where those games i mentioned werent being made at all.  Would you rather we go back to that era? Its never going ot be like 16 bit era ever again, 3d gaming ensured that along time ago.

Personally two of my most played genres this game were FPS and fighting games, so this question you bring up is quite interesting to me.

One thing I can say for certain is that FPS are much MUCH more pick up and play friendly than a fighting game. A good fighting game by design requires the player to spend a substantial amount of time into the game to get better, and it has a huge payoff. If you make a watered down fighting game for the masses, it'll just lead to a spamfest (as I've seen with many casual games like Naruto UNS2) and everyone will lose interest. This leads to the weeding out of casual gamers who just want to spend a few hours online, and ends up developing a community where everyone is very serious about the game (veterans). So for anyone new to come in after the initial release of the game is extremely hard since the veterans will just whoop your candy a** in whatever you do, and this is a problem with many fighters. The only way to solve this problem is through skill based matchmaking, but unfortunately for that to work you need a relatively large playerbase, which many fighters don't have due to their inherent design as discussed above. The one place where I saw this being implemented well was in Soul Calibur 5 because it has quite a large following. When I first got into the game I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but by playing people of similar rank to me I was able to have fun with relatively fair challenge. Unfortunately this isn't really possible with many others, like say Blazblue, which is an amazing game but suffers from a lack of a large userbase due to its complexity. This leads to you just sitting in the ranked match menu for 10-15 minutes before you can find a match with someone with the same skill level.

All the above is not a problem with FPS because the novice to veteran ratio is extremely lopsided due to the huge userbase. Plus FPS are in general much easier to get decent at (although you do need to spend time to become amazing), so people just stick to them without giving up. So when you are online and you're new, chances are you're playing mostly against other newcomers as well, which leads to a somewhat fun experience even if you are a newbie. It also helps that the matches are not 1 V 1, which could lead to similar problems as with fighting games, but rather 6 v 6, so the chances of continuously getting owned by a single good player is reduced.

@ultimateunknow. I dont know man, i find that alot of fighters do have a large enough following that that is not an issue. At least, your Street Fighters, Tekkens, Mortal Kombats, etc. Thats actually one of the reasons I love fighters, it forces you to do better, go hard or go home. vs FPS were you can kinda cruise by without being that good. Also I find despite Fighters not having a large user base, the user base does stick around

Back in the day it was very easy also to get into alot of fighting games just like fps today ,but maybe it seems that way with online multiplayer for fps because its still in its infancy on consoles, unlike competitive fighting games which have been around for some 20 years. So during the length of time fighting games have been around the less dedicated players were weeded out leaving only the veterans. Also only the fighting games with the most dedicated user base seems to be the ones that stick around, this could also happen to fps leaving the ones with the most dedicated user base around in the future instead of the large amount that are sent to market today, creating the whole cycle of veterans  against newcomers in the fps genre. Although there may be some advantages as you pointed out like not having 1 vs1.

I guess my response @ultimateunknown can also be used here