There was a time not that long ago that the JRPG genre was a huge market.  Fans would get extremely excited for the announcements of the big JRPG franchises and they would sell millions of units world wide

This generation however the genre has become extremely niche with only the Final Fantasy brand succeeding in moving any software outside of Japan.  In fact the Western RPGs have completely dominated the Japanese titles this gen.  Titles like The Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and such have become the faces of the RPG genre.

So what happened? Will Japanese RPGs ever find huge financial success and acclaim again or are they doomed to remain a mostly niche genre.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with JRPGs. I loved the fantasy and technological worlds and interesting characters and stories, but I hated the random battles and turn based combat.

The genre has been stuck in the same mode it was in back in the 8bit days. Back then the genre was limited by technology so the games couldn't have it all. Those limits became cliches that the genre has not broken free from. Wester RPG makers brought modern gameplay to RPGs, that's why Mass Effect is so popular and why it's so damn good.

The only thing that will save JRPG from slowly fading into oblivious is for JRPG devs to leave behind the cliches that they have relied on for far too long and bring modern gameplay into their worlds and stories.

Is this really that much different than what's happened before? I submit that JRPGs have largely been a niche market outside their home territory (Japan), and that even at the height of its popularity few JRPGs outside the mainline Final Fantasy titles ever went much beyond 1 million.

I hope they come back to there former glory! this gen has been total shit when it comes to JRPGs.

I like the simplified JRPGs, I liked wild arms on playstation. Earth Bound on nes. Final fantasy VII and VIII on playstation. I played for the story not game play. When they started all this realtime action nonsense or ridiculous overcomplicated stats and stuffs is when i fell out of liking them.

the reason the jrpgs havent been selling isn't because people don't like them, its because they haven't been making any good ones. Now, I'm sure fans of the genre will dispute me on that, but imo opinion there have only been three really good jrpgs this gen on consoles. Lost Odyssey, Last Story, and Xenoblade. Two of which were late gen wii games after the system was on its way out.

Handhelds had some good ones too, but I have a hard time playing an engrossing game like an RPG on a handheld.

Another major problem with jrpg's in the west is their apparent inability to get good voice actors. it is a very big problem in this genre...

While I somewhat agree the real difference is hype and excitement as well not just sales

stuff like .dot hack, Xenosaga, Chrono Trigger, Persona series, etc used to have huge World wide followings and it was often a major event when a big name JRPG was announced.  This generation literally Final Fantasy is the only brand that still carries any weight outside Japan and even it seems to be shrinking 

Before call of duty people we're playing a wide variety of games but now every publisher is trying to emulate it's success it's about shooters these days, even platformers,survival horror are dead kids game's are gone.
Hundreds of studios closed because of that.

final fantasy VIII was simplified??? did we play the same game??

The Lost Odyssey was very good. It had everything that made Final Fantasy good during the hight of Squaresoft's success.

BTW, you might be interested in this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/573261866/pier-solar-hd-an-rpg-for-xbox360-pc-mac-linux-and

I'm getting the Dreamcast version, but there are current gen versions as well.