Rumor--Suikoden VI for Wii

[Bodhesatva]

Helios said:

Bodhesatva said:

No, I didn't see that edit! Thanks.

Please note that I'm absolutely not saying that jRPGs are dying, just that they may be reaching a technical ceiling, where increased graphics, physics, AI, and other ambitious gameplay mechanics like "immersive worlds" are not going to increase much, simply because the revenue flow isn't there to warrant inreasing costs much beyond what we see now. I'm sure these processes WILL be streamlined to a degree, as you say, but it seems unlikely to create some fundamental shift. I could see middleware/etc. reducing costs by, say, 25 percent over time, and that would certainly raise the ceiling a bit; but does that really change anything fundamentally? It would just mean the ceiling is slightly higher, but the ceiling is still there, and it won't be going away unless more people start playing jRPG games -- which again, in the last 10 years, hasn't been happening. If anything, it's been the reverse.

That definitely doesn't mean that the jRPG genre will die out or become irrelevant, just that it wouldn't be the genre to be on the cutting edge graphically and technologically.

I see. Personally, I do believe that the JRPG will become niece and 'die' as a true genre of gaming - Sure, there'll be one or two every couple of years, but most companies will move on to greener pastures with games that apeal to a larger portion of the market while still retaining that which made them popular in the first place.

As for the current debate; I think you are both forgetting that developers will always make the games they want to. Games find their market, not the other way around. I doubt Nintendo will ever make, say, a shooter - even if their current games fail they'd rather thread new ground than resort to doing something they don't want. And even if the company is bought up and forced to do it, most developers would probably leave, or do something new with the genre.

I think graphics have something to do with this, as well. Most developers want the graphics to be the best they can be. If they had gotten it all for free, I'm sure they would have taken it. Anyway, that's another reason why there aren't any PS2 games on PS3 (and why some developers don't like the Wii, for that matter).

It's possible that you're right, but the market for jRPGs is so remarkably stable that it's hard to imagine for me. Possible, of course.

Suikoden really is the best example; it's sales have stayed amazingly constant throughout its iterations. There's some decline overall, but I think the market is neither decreasing nor increasing significantly.

Instead of being in steady decline, I percieved it as being saturated, with the types of people most interested in this type of stuff all having latched on, and there's really no more revenue streams to soak up. Is that even possible? I haven't thought this all the way through. Isn't it possible the genre will just stay the way it is -- fully saturated -- and not decline completely into insignificance?