Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
There have been plenty of AAA QUALITY handheld games. Even more AA quality handheld games that are still enjoyable and well worth playing. We're getting more on the way, from a ton of developers.
AAA + Handheld for me do not compute. AAA for me is, simply put, an incredibly high quality game. The likes of Crisis Core and Uncharted: Golden Abyss still don't scratch on the surface of a good console game with a fully realised world.
Taking that definition, then, what was the last AAA JRPG you played? Because Bravely Default, all by its little lonesome, had a more fully realized world than any console game I've played in a decade.

If JRPGs want to go back to consoles, they'll have to actually do well there. But I'd say Persona 5 and Xenoblade Chronicles X are going to be the ones the actually decide the fate of the JRPG on the console market. Not Square.
But they aren't going to be mass marketed, so they won't decide the fate. I can't see either of those games getting the marketing required to "decide the fate of the JRPG on the console market" - right now the fate is already decided - it's a niche thing (and niche will always be around, you don't truly kill off a genre, it just becomes niche). You need an FFVII level of impact to step back out of the niche area. I don't think Persona 5 and Xenoblade Chronicles are a the point that they will be talked about by everyone in the world, because these kind of games simply appear in the background and few new people pick them up when they are released.

I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but I'm a JRPG fan and I haven't touched either the Persona series or the Xeno series. There was one of them that I was quite interested in but they didn't even release it in the UK.
Nintendo has been getting a lot better with their marketing, and with their support of JRPGs, since Operation Rainfall succeeded. They're advertising the games more, offering cross promotions with other games (as they did with Fire Emblem Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV), and supporting the developers more for creating them.

Game marketing has shifted substantially since I was a kid. I'm not even sure how the majority of the games are advertised or marketed anymore, so I can't say for sure how Nintendo is doing in comparison to others. I find out about games mostly through reviewers/previewers, official developer websites, and some very active posters on here. But that's the same for every genre. If I stuck to just the games seen in TV or magazine ads... Well, let's just say I'm glad I live in a world where there are more games than just those.