Video gamers always had a short attention span. Remember arcades with Pacman and Space Invaders? They were 'impact moments', as the article labels them, 100% of the time.
On the NES, the way people played was in short bursts of Mario or Zelda interspersed with others, but they'd carry on playing those games for years to get hundreds of hours of total playtime because those games had replay value after completing the main progression.
The concept of the 40-hour game you play exclusively for a week to complete arose with the PS1 generation, pretty much. Wii and Kinect show that the arcade-like playing style is still there and the most popular way to play; I see no decline compared to those days.
The JRPG has always been a niche genre due to the time commitment, and it's not surprising that the most successful JRPG (Pokemon) is played in bursts over many months and isn't heavy on the story.
