New Sacred 2 Information (Looking VERY awesome!)

[Bodhesatva]

I think that JRPGs, generally speaking, have hit their economic ceilling, as Point and Click Adventures and SRPGs did before them.

That is, certain genres have basically stopped expanding, or even shrinking in size (Fighters like Tekken/Street Fighter are an example of this). If you have a stagnant revenue base (that basically only grows due to collector's editions and price hikes like 60 dollars per game instead of 50), you're going to run into trouble very quickly in an age when production costs are skyrocketing. Every genre will have their limit, where producers say: "That's it, no more, it is no longer economically feasible to spend more on this genre."

That's why SRPGs are stuck with late PS1/early PS2 graphics, for example. There isn't economic value in increasing production costs beyond that. Similarly, I think JRPGs will be stuck, by and large, with late PS2/early PS3 tech, because the genre is stagnant and does not warrant more significant financial investment.

And in case anyone thinks I'm calling for teh doom of teh RPGs, I'm not. Lots of great point and click adventures are still made, even if they are under most people's radar because they are no longer high profile releases; the only people that may be disappointed by this transition are those who insist on constantly improving graphics, no matter the cost.