Well I was going to say if you played the XBOX version that my be your problem, but I guess it simply wasn't for you.

USA and soon Europe are Shooter and Casual game supporting areas. I've predicted it for quite a while. jRPGs and Platformers (my two favorite genres) don't have too much of a chance in the West.

Are you trying to tell a joke? It is not especially funny.

Not really.  I mean R&C: TOD is not something too much to brag about, although sales are ok.

If it's not named Final Fantasy or Mario, there are problems.

You may have a point - a small one - with JRPGs, and that primarily with certain ones. I freely acknowledge the problem with JRPG penetration in the West. Nintendo hopes to change that by marketing Dragon Quest IX themselves and I wish them the best of luck.

But the overwhelming majojrity of platformers released in the current gen that has sold a significant amount of copies, especially on the consoles but also on the DS, have sold better in the West than in Japan, often better in America alone. Any of the sonic games, de Blob, Wario Land, every single Mario game, every Kirby game, Castlevania, Mega Man and its spinoffs, Little Big Planet, every Ratchet and Clank, every Jak and Daxter, Patapon... I could go on!

I think your expectations for platformers may be too high if you see them as underperforming in the west. Especially because they are crushing the sales for the same games in Japan.

Ok.  Platformers are ok.  They usually have some legs. Compared to FPS, no dice.

But for Dragon Quest, I remember Nintendo trying to market Dragon Warrior II (same as Dragon Quest) in America with the NES.  They actually gave a free copy of the game to Nintendo Power subscribers.  That was back in the day, I know.  With DQ8, SE bundled the game with FF 12.  I just don't think the West likes the anime style jRPGs very much.  Valkyrie Chronicles and Tales of Vesperia completely flopped outside of Japan.  They were both excellent games that just were not liked by the typical Bald Space Marine loving Western audience.

You are unfairly pigeonholing the Western audience and unfairly mischaracterizing the scope of Western developed games in the same breath. Stop it. You weaken your argument and decrease our ability to have a conversation.

Nintendo is not the same company now that they were five years ago, much less ten, much less twenty. Iwata has said that people said Brain Age could not be marketed outside of Japan: now, it looks like it may end up selling more than any game from the last generation.

No.  I'm just wishing them luck for marketing Dragon Quest.  I would love to see it become popular in the West.  There are a couple barriers.  The fact in Dragon Quest, players have to level grind alot more than other games.  Also, the Anime-designed characters don't help too much.  It's not about Nintendo, Sony, or MS for that matter.

MS tried to bring a bigger jRPG crowd in with Lost Odysse (I couldn't go through any TV program without seeing a commercial), but Cry On had to be cancelled.  I'm hoping Nintendo will have better luck  I'm sure there is more of an audience on Nintendo consoles that are willing to accept the genre than on the MS console.

Uh-oh. Now you actually had me do my research.

JRPGs, as a rule of thumb, have done better outside of Japan than in it this generation. Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, The Last Remnant, Eternal Sonata, Infinite Undiscovery, The World Ends With You/It's A Wonderful World, all the Pokemon games, every Final Fantasy... the consoles and the DS are rife with JRPGs that universally do better in the West! The only platform on which JRPGs seem to do better is the PSP, and there sales ae so low in all territories that they're almost negligible, with the biggest games (War of the Lions) doing better in the West anyway!

This paints a very different picture than the one you meant ot convey. Valkyria Chronicles and Tales of Vesperia are not examples of the rule, they are exceptions.

Westerners buy more JRPGs than the Japanese! By a lot!

Well, I've always said for a long time that portables will be the place to look for jRPGs or other niche Japanese games.  Home consoles - not so much right now.  Maybe when Wii get's DQ 10 or PS3 gets FF XIII (360 in west also), then things will be different. 

Anyway, I do wish the best for Nintendo and Marketing DQ9 in the West.  I personally don't know any Westerners beside myself that know what Dragon Quest is.  All the Japanese people I know living in Japan - that's a different story.  DQ in Japan is like Halo in America.  I can verify that myself.

All I'm saying, is there will be alot of work to make DQ9 popular outside of Japan.