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Originally Posted by magus113
That may be true, but I think the big problem is figuring out why exactly the jRPG is dwindling. What is it about Western RPGs that are seemingly more appealing to gamers here in America? It can't be the setting. There have been plenty of Western sci-fi, and fantasy (or combinations of the two) RPGs, so it's not the genre. Is it the storytelling? People started being more concerned with the stories the games told probably because of the jRPG in the first place. Now we have linear jRPGs with big blockbuster production and storylines (for better or worse) that are sometimes intricate, sometimes...pretty boring.
Hideo Kojima mentioned that in order to develop games for Western markets they need to have Western development teams...having Japanese developers make games for Western audiences causes a culture gap that isn't so easily traversed unless it's made for niche markets, case and point is Atlus and NiS. They localize lots of games that not everyone buys, and the people that do are in their target market, which according to Internet stereotypes are anime otaku, or weeaboos and the like.
I've never know people that play modern day first person shooters and action games to ever really play RPGs, either now or from previous generations, so maybe they need to try and find a way to create an RPG that these people will enjoy...but it's easier said than done. Final Fantasy XIII got rid of a lot of the fat that the genre had accumulated over the years, and it still didn't do well, for fans of the jRPG or fans of gaming in general.
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I've never been a huge rpg fan so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I have read that many of the players nowadays don't like to read too much during their games. I think this could be part of the problem too. I remember talking to every character in Golden Sun whenever I reached a new village. It would help with the story development and add depth to the game but it took like half an hour to talk to everyone in town and get to know what was happening.
Also, people don't use their imagination as much as they used to. Anything that is not sci-fi or action oriented doesn't sell as good as action games. It's always a well established series selling well if it's too imaginative, Like Mario, Final Fantasy, Zelda and the like. Okami, Shadows of the Colossus, Beyon Good and Evil come to mind as games that didn't reach their expectations. I don't see people talking about games like Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom either.