Yeah I think there's been a decent amount of innovation in JRPGs with Dark Souls and Demon's souls, which come from a very Japanese tradition as the spiritual successor to King's Field, and White Knight Chronicles also bringing in a lot of interesting ideas with online multiplayer, as well as evolving the FFXII system, which should be the new "traditional" JRPG combat system.

Then you have Valkyria Chronicles, a very bold step for SRPGs, and these are all console titles; after that comes the creative push on handheld with Radiant Historia and the like.

Honestly I'd say WRPGs are just as niche. Skyrim pretty much shed the last RPG vestiges that series had left, and we've all seen Bioware turn Mass Effect and Dragon Age into action games with dialogue trees. I doubt the popularity for the rest of the genre is really all that high.