lol I forgot Toki to Towa... another PS3 JRPG.

well lets see here xenoblade came out got glowing praise and was a success for nintendo(obviouisly it was otherwise they wouldnt be making a sequel). Ni No Kuni comes out gets glowing praise and was a success for namco. Last Story releases get great praise and is xseed's best selling game they ever had which is reason for pandora's tower localization. Do i need to continue any further?? Has it finally sunk in yet it?? ive been hearing this crap for years now that JRPG's are dead blah blah blah...but guess what? JRPG's are still being made and we are still seeing them come over. sure maybe not as many but we still are seeing them come over. think about it logically here ppl if they were dead as u said then why do we continue to see them be brought over? shouldn't they have died years ago? . its obvious that these guys aren't expecting them to sell millions of units and be the next cod most have reasonable expectations for there games and from the looks of it most of them are succeeding.

sure things are not how they used to be i get that; things could be better but they are far from being dead as most idiots on the internet seem to think.

this thread needs more Lightning

I think the genre either needs to change or it will die. Xenoblade is a great example of a Japanese RPG for the 21st century. It has all the quirkiness and story tropes of a JRPG without the tedious random battles or turn based nonsense that only Japan seems to prefer in great enough number to warrant further releases.

I don't think the traditional JRPG will die completely. I do think it will shrink to the naturally small niche genre that it was before Final Fantasy exploded it's popularity. WRPGs have taken the place of JRPGs and I don't see that changing any time soon.

I think what people really like about JRPGs is the Japanese style in character design, plot, etc. I don't think that the majority of JRPG player that came into the genre with FF7 are totally in love with the JRPG gameplay. Japanese devs need to fine a balance between Japanese content style and Western gameplay.

i think -long story short- japanese devs had an issue with the increasing costs of game development in general this generation

I think on 360 they are not already dead but they smell so.
Blue Dragon was great but didn't sell well and even ff13 had much lower sales than expected.

On playstation? the real great AAA jrpg's have some problems as there is only ff left and dragon quest was exclusived by Nintendo-only great new was ni no kuni,but it sold far more than expected in the west(though overall sales are imo disspointing)
low-mid budget rpgs are not dying-that's for sure.Almost any weak you can read something about a new jrpg and you may need 2 years to play and finish all jrpg's available on ps3.That's far away from dying.

Wii-xenoblade sales were dissapointing considering the great reviews and dragon quest mmo sales were dissapointing(sadly wii u dragon quest mmo still looks like a ps2 game with anti aliasing)on the other hand t an old dragon(warrior)quest is selling real good in japan on 3ds.

I think the golden times for jrpg's have passed ,but no reason to worry,as there is another xenoblade to come,another final fantasymaybe another ni no kuni or dark chronicle and if you want to revive jrpg's on a high level you just need a remake of the mother of all hypes:ff7.
this game would sell far more than 10 million copies(multiplatform)

edit:considering that even here in germany jrpg's are produced(rainbow moon) i think they are far away from dying.And Rainbow moon is very very jrpg-bitmap style,100hour+ gameplay.

the sales(though only sold on psn) were good and a vita version will be released this year.

I think if even german can make succesfull jrpg's than this genre is far from dying.

I agree with you that random battles can be rather annoying and some JRPGs have made me want to tear my hair apart with encounters every 5 seconds, but turn based nonsense? Have you tried the Persona games? Would you call their battle system nonsense? I understand in your opinion it might be but I think turn based battles are just another way of playing games. Look at how successful pokemon is with turn based. Either way I don't think gameplay needs to be "western", it just needs to be revolutionary. Something new because we want new experiences like the world ends with you was. It wasn't open world but at the same time it provided freedom to really play the way you wanted.

But anyway I do agree with you that JRPGs may just be a niche but I just hope that they bring back the quality from previous gens as well as everything (character+story) people generally love about JRPGs. The last thing I want is every game becoming a Skyrim clone. I mean look at COD. It was great when it first came out and then everyone copied it and now people hate it lol.

The genre will never dead... JRPG was never made to west gamers... weat gamers that like JRPG import from Japan (like me).

I like the NIS games because the gameplay... the battlesystem and the full numbered stats... it is so fun to make and grow up chars.

The problem with JRPG is just that you said they are trying to do... westernize to try to have more sales in west... so because that the FFXIII is considered the worst FF ever made (I never played)... if FFXIII was like FFVII the world could be small for this franchise with sales and hype over any other JRPG ever made.

The big JRPG developers like Square Enix needs to back to the roots to create again game enjoyable.

PS. JRPG today is so strong with more than two titles launched per month.

FF XIII was not made to appeal to western gamers. It was made even more Japanese style than past ones. The battle system is still turn based and the game follows all the Japanese RPG tropes that appeals to the Japanese. Western RPGs are nonlinear and western gamers love big worlds like Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls, FF XIII is linear just like all JRPGs. The problem with FF XIII was it wasn't a great game. It wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't a great game. The only major difference between it and past Final Fantasy games is its lack of towns. All you do in towns is talk to people and buy/sell stuff and you still get to talk to people and buy/sell stuff in FF XIII.