Pretty telling that the best jrpg this gen Chaos Rings was made for the iPhone.. And there is where the future is for jrpgs.. On mobile..

Yep and the music was by Nobuo Uematsu who did the music for the original Final Fantasy as well as some of the most loved Squaresoft games.

The only reason I can think of that Lost Odyssey didn't go on to become the next Final Fantasy is that jRPG fans tend to be hardcore Sony fans and they never gave the game a chance or flat out turned their noses up because it was a 360 game. It's too bad becuase it really was something special and deserved to be more than a one shot cult classic.

JRPGs never actually "dominated" outside of Japan. Yes they enjoyed a burst of popularity during the late 90's / early 00's due to the much hyped release of FFVII from all the drama surrounding Square breaking ties with Nintendo, coupled with the increased popularity of anime in the west during that time (Pokemon and DBZ were the two most popular cartoon shows during that time here in the US).

Those days are long gone however, and aside from the occasional crossover game like Kingdom Hearts, most JRPGs just haven't been the huge system movers here in the west that they've been in Japan for decades now.

Yeah, Lost Odyssey is legit.  It's spoiled me for other JRPG's this gen.  Nothing comes close to it.  'Course it's real slim pickings, but still.

Yeah for sure.  Uematsu is amazing.  One of the main reasons I'm hoping Nintendo and Level-5 localize Fantasy Life

The only reason I can think of that Lost Odyssey didn't go on to become the next Final Fantasy is that jRPG fans tend to be hardcore Sony fans and they never gave the game a chance or flat out turned their noses up because it was a 360 game. It's too bad becuase it really was something special and deserved to be more than a one shot cult classic.

I think we have seen several problems for JRPG: weak games, not enough games (remember the days of 3 good final fantasies per gen instead of 1 poor one?), poor promotion and a fragmented user base. Mistwalker put out two games on X360 which had no market in Japan. Then it put out one on Wii. Many RPG fans own a PS3 since PS2 was the former home of JRPGs. Mistwalker has two of the key members from Square, so who do you follow...Square or Mistwalker? Then there's Xenoblade, which barely got a release in the west even though it was possibly the best of the generation. So as a fan, what system to do you buy? What games can you trust to be good? Is it worth getting hyped for a game when it may not come west? The days of Sony publishing and promoting FF7 as a system seller seem so long ago.

I think there is hope on the horizon. WiiU could potentially bring the fan base together. We know Monolith's next game is coming, and is being hyped as a worthy opponent for WRPG's. We know Mistwalker is making a WiiU game. We know DQX is going to be on WiiU. With the system's early launch and Nintendo's popularity in Japan, and since the WiiU can produce high-end graphics for a well produced JRPG, we may see a concentration of JRPG games and fans on the system. If square launches a real good FFXV, and especially if it's on WiiU, we could see the fan base picking up all of those games and driving the genre, back to relevancy worldwide. I hope so, and big reason I picked up wiiU was Monolith and Mistwalker.

Don't forget Fire Emblem.  Amidst all the changing toward more Western-oriented games, Iwata allows Intelligent Systems to carry on as if SNES-style SRPG's never went out of style.   Not that I'm complaining!

Square is lost to me, though.  Those three games you highlighted are the worst offenders.  There are other stinkaroos too, but they're other publisher's faults.  Like Microsoft allowing Sakaguchi and Mistwalker to bungle Blue Dragon.  At least he was given a reprieve and Lost Odyssey made up for the mess that was his first foray into HD development.

Depends if the taste of the gaming community is changing again.

We changed from the Last Gen to this one.
From a complete Japanese controlled Gen to a Gen where a company from the USA entered seriously the competition and introduced FPS MP on consoles with online possibilities.
J-RPGs in the past Gens on consoles were what FPS are today.Every 2nd game was a J-RPG like every 2nd game today is a Shooter.

You can see in some countries J-RPGs still top the Most Wanted Charts.
I think in Germany NiNoKuni is at Number 1 Most Wanted right now and so it gets some love from other ones too.
People in some countries cry for every Tales of or Xenoblade.I think Europe and Japan are the strongest and safest markets right now for J-RPGs.
The problem is of course > SquareEnix screwed up big in this Gen.The biggest Name in the J-RPG Industry made more mistakes than anyone could have even thought of.
They didn't impact the Genre like they are used to.They wanted to adapt their games to the CoD Community like few other big Japanese companies.
So the smaller ones had to step in but they don't have the "Name power" behind their games even if they are quality in terms of gameplay and stuff.But without the name power of an older Console Gen or enough money to invest in a new beautiful J-RPG you are kinda fu...d in this Shooter driven Generation.

If we have a big change again then yes.
But as long as this stays like this we won't see a big and real good J-RPG anymore.Especially not from SquareEnix as long as they don't let Team Nomura take over so they can go back to former quality.
Till then the western world has to start petitions to get the games over to the west.

And yeah - The start of this Gen was kinda screwed up for J-RPG developers.They choose a console cause of weird promises over the console they would sell their stuff on it.
Now the interest isn't completely lost but it isn't as strong as before at the Genre.People are pissed or moved to other things.
It really depends Next Gen how good Sony and the J-RPG Developers can work together and how much other competitors let them work together without interfering to much in decisions and quality.

The only one of those three that was developed by SE was The Last Remnant.  Star Ocean and Infinite Undiscovery were developed by Tri-Ace. Infinite Undiscovery is actually MS IP. SE threw all their eggs into the FFXIII basket. That game, and it's sequel, were sub-par at best.