Quote Originally Posted by Skyblade View Post
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.
Lightning Returns, probably. Not sure if it can be classed as an AAA, really, but if it can't be then FFXIII (I'm not including MMOs). I hope to play Ni no Kuni, which I class as either an AAA game or extremely close to it.

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.
As good as their marketing might be, I have not heard of Operation Rainfall, I don't ever see any marketing for Fire Emblem Awakening and I couldn't say I know of anything about it that separates it from other Fire Emblem games (literally, the only part of FE games I recognise is the FE bit, I never see much about them) and Shin Megami Tensei IV is something I haven't heard of (same goes for I, II and III). If this is good marketing, I'm clueless to it. It may be that they are advertised a bit better for Nintendo fans, but as a gamer in general, the only recent JRPG I know about for a Nintendo console is The Last Story.

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.
TV, magazines, newspapers, posters in stores, that kind of thing. I'm glad I live in a world where there are more games than just those kind of games, too, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that if a developer wants to smash JRPGs back into the market as anything but a niche thing, then it will need to have an AAA budget for marketing. I'm not talking about simply being a good game, I'm talking about being a good game that is marketed to enough people to allow it to be a big deal, just as they did with Final Fantasy VII when it came out. The FF series is the only JRPG series I have ever seen marketing for in the mediums I mentioned. Other than that, I only see the occasional review of a JRPG and that's it.