They didn't.

Well, unless you look at Pokemon as a spike, but that leveled off after Gold and Silver.

JRPGs have never been that huge, guys, except for Final Fantasy and (maybe) Kingdom Hearts! It's sad, but it's true!

Well, and Pokemon.

Everybody likes to ignore Pokemon.

JRPG was declining??....hmmm...could have never told from the sales side....looks about the same as it did in 1997....only Square being able to sell over a mill here and there...it was more like FF7 opened up the floodgates for FF series....which eventually also led to KH sales because alot of people could relate to FF7....bu other than that...i haven't seen any other JRPG sales go up from then..it's been the same then as now

but as far as developers making JRPG...yes that is on the decline...we have not seen much JRPGs come out as it should...all they're doing is releasing remakes on either ds, psp, or wii...and sometimes on PSN and Live...no new games though...

when they started doing bad games.

When they became stale, dull, unimaginative, and repetitive.

There's only so many times you [most likely an orphan or last survivor of a burned down village] can save the world from some super evil power [who is most likely your brother/father/sister's cousin's former roommate] while remaining the strong, silent, androgynous type [with hair spikes that could puncture steel plating and a sword heavier than your 17yo, 90lb body] with a cast of mismatched ruffians [a lady's man--pervert, an either very old or very young wizard, an ethnic stereotype, and a princess in hiding] and a scripted trip through the overworld/town/dungeon cycle produced by the local chamber of commerce insuring that you'll visit all the notable landmarks [tower of magic, crystal caves, fire world, enemy castle/fort] and utilize the most popular transportation systems [pirate ship, airship, train--which is most likely a ghost train] before it all becomes nauseating.

Even the musical scores, perhaps the most distinguishing aspect, start to sound alike after awhile--like all those 80's hairbands.

And if I never fight a random encounter while stepping from square A to square B again, it will be too soon.

[EDIT: OK, it's been a long time since I posted, but is there a reason why the "enter" key is not making paragraph breaks in my post? In the edit screen it looks fine, but the actual post is coming up as one big block of text. I had to put html tags in just to get a paragraph break--that's very sloppy.]

Jrpg's have never been "big" in the west. Excepted Final Fantasy of course!

That's bizarre, and I have not heard of it. What browser and version are you using?

The only JRPG big in the west is Pokemon and maybe Kingdom Hearts/Final Fantasy

IMO JRPGs only have three main series: Final Fantasy series, Pokemon series and Dragon Quest series. Outside those three main series they are basically niche unheard of B-Grade crap that barely sell more than 500k sales ltd on average. (Yes, there are some odd exceptions to that rule.)

I'm using Firefox 3.0.5--skipped a few recent updates I think. I'm also running no script with vgchartz disabled-due to the virus issues a while back I still don't "trust" the site. But, I don't think that would cause it to not "see" paragraph returns in a post.

EDIT: just noticed, it also doesn't seem to like double spaces after a period. So sentences are closer together than they should be.

That's very weird. Send a PM to TalonMan, he will be able to help you.

http://vgchartz.com/profiles/profile.php?id=247

Here is his profile.