JRPGs had several things going for them in the earlier generations:
-Plot, in my opinion, JRPGs had the best stories out of every other genre, if not all of them combined, these days, there's things like FF13, lol.
-Soundtracks, soundtracks are an excellent method to draw a player into the game, from tracks like "bombing mission" to "One who is torn apart", nowdays the game with the best soundtrack is FF13, lol.
-Interesting gameplay, if you look back to the PS1-2 days, there was a variety of gameplay within the genre (in the PS1 era games like Vagrant Story or Chrono Cross, PS2 era the SMT games etc), these days it seems like either a rehash of older generation games or streamlined shit like in FF13, lol.
These days, Square-Enix, the only big JRPG company, has lost all of their key persona, and seems to only be able to make shitty games, other devs just don't have the financial backing to make a good JRPG.
Bet with Dr.A.Peter.Nintendo that Super Mario Galaxy 2 won't sell 15 million copies up to six months after it's release, the winner will get Avatar control for a week and signature control for a month.
