If you'd like to discuss the state of the industry, I'd recommend starting a thread in the appropriate forums. I don't think it belongs in this weekly design discussion.
I thought I was just elaborating on the topic and branching out, to discuss the bigger picture of why the jRPGs are having problems by exploring why games in general have a problem. But I guess I got sidetracked, sorry.
(But to just answer one of your comments quickly, I wasn't claiming that indies are surpassing AAA titles in any way. I was implying that game made with 20x the number of people and 1000x more resources shouldn't be just 2-3 times better - no matter the diminishing returns on manpower. But as you said, this is off topic so enough said.)
As for jRPGs, I just think that it's gonna be hard understanding why a specific genre of games is having problems if you don't understand the industry as a whole - or the individual jRPG and it's individual feature cells, for that matter. My immediate response would be that jRPGs tend to be clones of eachother on a much higher frequency than wRPGs. In that regard, I think that the accessibility factor is less relevant, though still always there.
I personally don't like jRPGs because I think they are complicated, have un-immersive combat, they show off a lot of overhyped superpower stuff that ends up being a parody of itself and they often have a ton of dialogue that I'm just waiting impatiently to shuffle through because I didn't pay $50 to watch a movie. One of the great exceptions to this was Final Fantasy 7, an almost perfect jRPG which still had some of the negatives, but made up for that with tons of positive content - a ridiculous number of mini-games, a vast story arc that was well-defined with compelling characters and unique personalities.
I haven't played too many jRPGs the last year though, so I'm probably not the right person to ask.