You can blame the gaming industry itself. Its growing too fast for itself to keep up. Everything's too expensive to keep pushing the envelope. And unfortunately a lot of things that made Square the dominant force they are were never even released outside of Japan. They got bigger and bigger and we saw Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger. Seiken Densestus 3 wasn't even released, despite how popular it is (unless I'm horribly mistaken). Along with some of their other gems of the time, some of which have only recently been translated for our enjoyment u_u (Treasure of Rudras, Treasure Hunter G, Bahamut Lagoon, etc). I don't really know what point I'm trying to make now... I just sorta realized America and other countries get mostly franchise games. Have for a long time. Unfortunately I guess that's basically all Japan's getting now too. So I do see your point. But its not because they can't be innovative. I'm guessing its more because they're afraid to risk finances on innovation. Its sort of cyclical. Capcom milked the heck out of Street Fighter and then we got RE, and they realized they could milk that, and did so, then we got Power Stone and stuff, they milked the others some more and we got Onimusha, something else they added to the milking machines, and then we got Viewtiful Joe. And back to milking x_x; Franchises are just a sure hit. I bet Square's lost a lot more money on the long production of FFXII than the FF7 Saga :/ They're trying to innovate there, when not everyone's as interested in FF as they used to be. FF7 nostalgia gaurantees a vast amount of sales for the Saga of FF7. A lot of people don't plan on even trying XII simply because it innovated and went to real-time combat.