See thread title.

Are they important anymore? 

Here we are, three years into the "next generation" of gaming consoles with the XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, and PlayStation 3.  Japanese Role-Playing games usually defined the market leader of the generation.  The system that had the support of JRPG giants Square, Enix (now Square-Enix) and the like were the winners in the Japanese region, and the overall winner of the console race.  Also, JRPGs sold astoundingly well on those platforms. 

I'm going to use Final Fantasy as my basis for this argument (I won't be using the earlier Final Fantasies for data prior to VII as the data is sketchy at best).  Now lets start with Final Fantasy VII.  The game was on the PS1 (The highest selling home-console in Japan it's generation) and sold 9.72 million units.  Very good!  VIII comes out a few years later, and while not doing as high as VII, still post respectable numbers with 7.86 mil.  A few years pass, and IX comes out, and *only* manages 5.3 million units.  Pretty awesome for any JRPG, but for a FF game, in the shadow of VII, and VIII, not too good.

Then the next generation of gaming starts, and Final Fantasy X is put on the PlayStation 2.  Which does very well, right around VIII numbers with 7.95 million units.  And just two years ago, we get Final Fantasy XII, which manages a paltry 5.09 million units.  So as we can see, (aside from the anomaly that is X) Final Fantasy games have been on a downward slope since their heyday with the PlayStation 1.  Some would argue that the quality has gone down since then, Metacritic disagrees:  92, 90, 94, 92, 92 (scores of FFVII, VIII, IX, X, and XII) so that's not up for argument.

But Final Fantasy isn't the only telling sign of the reasoning for this question.  Let's look at recent games on the PlayStation 3, XBOX 360 and Wii.  Only two RPGs this generation have managed to beat the 500k unit barrier:  Lost Odyssey, and Blue Dragon (barely).  This means that the best selling JRPG this generation (as of now) is on the XBOX 360.  The Wii has one JRPG that has broken the 500k barrier (DQ: Swords) and the PS3 has none.  But looking at this, this is an entirely different situation when related to sales. 

The 360 has the highest selling JRPG, but the lowest console sales in Japan.  The Wii has the second highest JRPG sales, and is the best selling system.  The PS3 has (relatively) no JRPG sales, yet is still besting the 360 in Japan.  So how, all of a sudden, did JRPGs get to be so important this genertation?  The answer:  Microsoft.  For some reason, Microsoft has been lobbying (read: purchasing) JRPG support right and left.  Which is fine!  Expanding horizons, and offering your consumers a wide variety of games should be applauded, but what that has done is put an undue emphasis on this gaming genre.  This gaming genre that hasn't had a game break a million units sold yet this generation.  Every other gaming genre (save for strategy, which never sells) has managed to have at least one game in the genre break 1 million, but no JRPGs this generation yet. 

My friends, don't get me wrong.  I love a good JRPG.  ANd I can't wait to play WKC and FFXIII on my future PlayStation 3, but the amount of attention that they get on these forums is baffling.  With JRPGs tanking left and right (Infinite Undiscovery), there is no reason to care if one system has proven itself at selling JRPGs over another.  With sales relegated to big name franchise such as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, being able to sell JRPGs is irrelevant this generation, as you can see with a certain console's ability to sell JRPGs, and it's inability to sell consoles in the land of the rising sun.

See you in the comments!

Good read. I always thought that Microsoft buying JRPG would be really bad for the genre. Let's be honest, that's pretty much the reason why they don't sell, they're pretty much all on the 360.

I think it was a terrible idea for Japanese companies to accept Microsoft money. They're shrinking their market and when Microsoft stop supporting them...

The JRPG (or as they used to be, simplified RPG) was never critical to the success of a console; it helped, but ultimately it was the presence of many and varied genres that made systems shine. The 360 has shown this to be quite true; it has many JRPGs, but is losing ground to the PS3 and has been in the Wii's shadow since the Wii's launch.

The original reason that the simplified RPG was so valuable to a console was for the very reason that most hardcore gamers hated them at the time they were invented: they made the RPG accessible to a whole new audience. Yes, the hardcore used to loathe the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, seeing them as insults to the grand tradition of games like Ultima.

But as time went on, they stopped being simple. In pandering to fans, the genre segmented into many variations (action, strategy, themed, and many hybrids). The complexity kept going up and up, and the userbase kept dropping. This happens regularly in markets and sub-markets, of course (innovation -> growth -> segmentation -> decline -> crash). The origin of the simplified RPG's success was forgotten, and they were no longer simplified but rather just another form of complicated RPG with a distinctly Japanese air to them.

The RPG genre is in dire need of a new simplified entry. Dragon Quest games keep the flame burning, but a true innovation to change the genre and make it truly accessible will be necessary to save it from crashing.

Only 3 JRPG franchises have ever been important, and they're still important today, so yes.

In japan it's a must as MS has learned to take advantage of and Sony has forgotten.

 This.

A few things.

First, JRPGs have migrated to the handhelds this generation, something that hasn't happened in previous generations. Plenty of JRPGs have gone platinum on the DS and PSP, for instance, whereas none have on the consoles, arguably because the bulk of the RPGs are on the handhelds.

Second, you're vastly overestimating the power and influence that JRPGs have ever had. Granted that they were the genre king in Japan for long periods (and that they remain powerful there: see above), but as SkyRender aptly stated, they were not the exclusive route to victory. Put alternatively, gamers cannot game on one genre alone. More importantly, only Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have routinely been platinum games: other series will occassionally reach those marks, but those instances were the exceptions rather than the rule.

Third, your analysis is flawed because you've chosen a terrible place to begin it. The Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series reach back to the NES era. Why not begin there? You'll find that the NES and SNES had RPGs in droves, but that none of them had sales that approached that of FF VII (*sigh*). You'll also find that in the 16-bit era the SNES had the lion's share of JRPGs, but that its victory over the Genesis was fairly small. Does that not argue against your primary assumption that JRPGs were ever truly important?

Money is money, weather it is MS, Sony, or Nintendo's. Japan publishers accepting MS's money is because, knowone else is exactly throwing it at them, are they? The JRPG publishers are going to get whatever money is given.

My biggest problem with the original XBox was the lack of JRPG's (I love them). That's why I love/loved the PS2. This gen Sony just expected that they would get all the JRPG's because they were......uhhh....SONY!!

The fact that my console of choice has an abundant variety of JRPG's is great for me and many fans of the the JRPG genre. The genre is not crashing, and has/continues to experience good profit.

There will always be a market for JRPG, and this time around, I am experiencing a large variety of great JRPG's with my 360, thank you MS.

Lot's of good points in this thread.

DMJ is right but it's not that JRPGs are in less demand. It's that other markets have grown larger and faster. Because proportionally more of other types of games are being made and sold by a relatively small increase in the production diversity, this means that yes JRPGs are less important to the industry and to the total community of gamers. To the people that used to play them and still play them, JRPGs are still important.

JRPGs are expensive to make on a home console because JRPGs traditionally focused on state-of-the-art presentation, they migrated to DS and PSP. Soon you will see a bunch on Wii.

it doesn't matter 360 even with all JRPG is behind 4:1 ps3 with no RPG and wii 7.5+/1(without RPG either).