Well, I liked LO, but the load times and slow pace ruined the end for me.

I'd say Eternal Sonata is much better. That's just my opinion though.

However, in Japan, it is getting a PS3 release also. 

 Ah. Thats the crux of the JRPG curse.

Turn based "traditional" JRPGs tend to do better due to the simplistic menu-based concept, and it seems that J-Gamers prefer that. Innovative (battle wise) titles like Eternal Sonata, Rogue Galaxy, Odin Sphere, and others langush in sales, while the "big ones" are almost always stale, and lack innovation...Yet do much better.

Kingdom Hearts is the last big JRPG I've seen that's broke the mold, and done well in it's native country. It seems that the west is far more favorable to said action JRPGs, and ones that wander away from the typical formula...It seems like the US got tired of Dragon Quest/Warrior after it moved from NES to SNES and further...While FF still maintains some sort of decent sales in the US at times.  

That's the thing that i don't get though.  Why are turn based RPGs considered stale?

I mean look at just about any other genre... and it's different.  Turn based games often have differences... just the battle system stays the same.  Just how FPS often allow you to use different guns... but it still stays FP.

Look at Dungeons and Dragons, they change a lot from game to game... yet they still keep a LOT.  Those changes per edition are similar to the differences in various turn based RPGs... yet are seen as stale... while D&D is not.

I'd say the differences between turn based games are just as varied as any other genre... and just seen as stale by the west because the west didn't really like turn based RPGs in the first place. 

Rogue Galaxy was not innovative in anyway.  American gamers tend to hate turn-based battle systems since a lot of the time, they are very tedious and repetitive.  There are exceptions though i.e. Lost Odyssey

Real time battle systems can also be repetitive i.e. Kingdom Under Fire Circle of Doom

Yeah, this seems like the perfect opportunity to bring up one of my favorite JRPG's this gen, which is The World Ends With You. It innovates in multiple ways, and has done reasonably well in sales, of course, it's no Dragonquest or Monster Hunter.

I agree with you, Dragonquest wouldn't sell so well if Japan wasn't into to completely traditional JRPGs. It's definately a hardcore, traditional dungeon crawler with excellent production values.

I would also like to say that I believe advertisement, hype, and name recognition have even more to do with sales. For instance, a Final Fantasy game would sell millions if it was a traditional game, or not.

...and FF Verses XIII will sell worse than FFXIII simply because it has the world "verses" in it, and people get the wrong impression. Even if both the games were interchangable. Wouldn't matter which game was which, the one called Final Fantasy XIII and nothing more, would sell better. 

RPG's are repetitive. Diablo 2 is one of my favorite games, but it's repetitive as hell. However, it sucks you in. That is one of the biggest appeals of the genre. Repetition to increase power. Games where you character starts out as powerful as he is ever going to get aren't as engaging, generally, to a certain crowd. That's why even games like DMC4, The Darkness, Bioshock, Zelda, and Ninja Gaiden have RPG elements. They just tend to make a game better, all other things being equal.

I meant stuff like high random encounter rates, pointless button mashing

Diablo 2 and those other games you listed are repetitive in a good way 

Absolutely right! Not any of the current gen consoles can match the DS. Dragon Quest IV, V, VI, IX, FFIV, Valkyrie Profile, Summon Night Twin Age, Summon Night, FF Tactics A-2, Etrian Odyssey 2, Rune Factory 2, Knights in the Nightmare, Ash, World Destruction and a bunch more. 

I don't care if a RPG / Strategy is real time, turn based, action time battle, 1st peron / 3rd person, or whatever, as long as the game is good. Although I no longer can stand random encounters, I'm glad they're using that a lot less in new games.

Believe it or not, this is a DS game:

It's not doing well because MS fucked up with the original Xbox. With few titles in the beginning that didn't support the Japanese audience well at all, it gave it a negative brand. It's also not helping that there is a personal bias to American companies, specifically MS, in Japan as well. But because MS didn't begin trying they ended up hurting themselves for a long time to come.

 Microsoft can turn things around. Keep in mind the Sega Saturn was pretty big in Japan.