Loony BoB is right - the JRPG is not an AAA mainstream medium anymore, it's become much more of a niche genre. Tastes and preferences have changed and I think the tastes of the average gamer have "matured" as the average age has increased. If you look at the SNES and PS generations of gaming, JRPGs and Platformers were huge deals and AAA games. Now? JRPG is a niche genre and platformers are now consigned to indie releases, with the exception of Mario which certainly isn't the powerhouse it once was. Conversely, look at the FPS. Originally considered to be PC and PC only, it has now taken the console world by storm and is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

I'm not going to win any fans for saying this, but I think JRPGs are seen as babyish and kidlike. Anime in general is. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but that's certainly the perception. Indeed a lot of the JRPGs last generation had teenage characters and that dorky awful Pokemon style "WAAAAAAAH!" humour. What I saw of Star Ocean 4 was skin crawling, and search YouTube for "Infinite Undiscovery Dinner Dance". I'm not interested in hearing that these were the worst JRPGs ever or whether or not there were serious JRPGs to counteract this so if you're planning on listing them at me, use your time more productively. I'm saying these are examples of JRPGs from this generation with some real teenage and immature elements to the writing and tarnish the reputation of JRPGs as being a serious game. To me, when I look at the cover of something like Tales of Xillia and see it covered with anime characters I am immediately put off because of the expectation that it's going to be dumb. Maybe I'm missing out, but likewise I doubt I'm the only one.

Square have said they are still aiming Final Fantasy at teens - that's a huge mistake. Kids and teens these days expect a different experience out of games. Have you seen them play? They skip all the cutscenes and just get right into the action. It's not like our generation where we didn't have anything better. I was 11 when I picked up my first FF. Probably the most popular game (if it's not CoD!) for that age bracket is Minecraft. No cutscenes, no story, just hop right in and play. A JRPG by comparison to Minecraft or CoD is creeping death and kids don't want to know.

Japan itself certainly isn't the King of Video Games in the west. Remember when it used to be this mystical foreign land when you were a kid? All the best and newest games and tech would be there! Zelda, Mario, Nintendo, Pokemon, Sega, oh god! Wooooooow! Japan was the only show in town. Now all the popular games for kids are Western. If there were western powerhouse developers when we were kids, would Japanese games and culture have been as popular as it became? Who can say?

Maybe if a JRPG for adults - and wasn't targeted at anime lovers, sorry guys - came out it'd get more respect and be an AAA title but I don't know if many exist. Certainly I would be more interested anyway. And because I know EoFF has a whimsical boner, adult doesn't mean serious. Scrubs is for adults and is whimsical as trout. I don't know, maybe it's just Japanese humour that culturally is immature here. I think it will be a niche genre from now on though, and for Square it's a case of either sticking to what you know and appease your ageing fanbase, or else gamble and try for something new to expand. They've chosen the latter option. I wonder if they're in a Catch-22 position though.