Well, the series died because it did horribly in Japan and then a few entries later it dried up in the West as well, so your final guess would most likely be correct.
Just to back up why the
Advance Wars franchise is unlikely to return:
Not a single million seller.
And even the niche audience does not seem that big, because as the responses so far have shown, there aren't many similar games.
For me personally, it's too difficult to enjoy.
I think the both of you are slightly misrepresenting this series' sordid and unfortunate history that has led to this situation, so I should likely give a breakdown of the situation for those who aren't familiar with things.
Famicom Wars for the original Famicom and the original Game Boy Wars for the Game Boy have been the only retail releases in Japan that didn't appear plagued with problems or suffering from peculiar releases and just generally has had a really REALLY bad go of it in Japan.
After Game Boy Wars in 1991, the Game Boy Wars part of this series was actually licensed to Hudson Soft for development and publishing and the series took a dive in interest along with it. The 3rd of these titles from Hudson Soft was released in Japan the same year as Advance Wars in North America.
Super Famicom Wars, the pseudo-remake (ala Star Fox Zero) to the original Famicom Wars, was released on the Super Famicom in 1998. Yeah, you see that year correct, it was released
3 years after the release of the PlayStation.
Worse yet, it did not have a proper retail release, but was part of a special retailer setup where you could buy a blank Super Famicom cartridge, which could be loaded at kiosks with multiple games. Super Famicom Wars was one of them (making sales figures all but impossible to even obtain) but unlike the rest of the games, in order to have it, it took ALL the space available on the blank cartridge, whereas the other games were small enough that you could have more than one.
These cartridges with Super Famicom Wars on them have become one of the biggest collector's items in gaming. Like, rarer than an SNES copy of Ogre Battle or Earthbound.
Advance Wars, originally set to release for the Game Boy Advance in the same year as in North America, was pulled from its original release date due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks (as Japan is prone to removing entertainment from consumption if it contains imagery it considered disrespectful to a tragedy).
It and its sequel were not even released in Japan until after they had both been released in North America as a compilation cartridge in 2004, but given that the franchise had been so off the radar for retailers for more than 10 years and Nintendo passing the Game Boy Wars series to Hudson did the franchise no favors, hopes weren't high, retailers bought very little stock and it was barely promoted.
Famicom Wars DS (AW
S) met a similar fate. No retailer confidence, and even Nintendo had given up trying to sell the series in Japan.
And then the visual, tonal and gameplay changes that occurred after that basically tanked interest in the franchise in the West, as well.
So just saying "oh yeah, it doesn't sell well" isn't really telling the whole story. Anything that could have gone wrong with this series DID go wrong with this series.
Neither was Fire Emblem until the 3DS version.
And this is a fair point. I think with IntSys being able to turn Fire Emblem around, Nintendo might give them a shot to do the same with the Wars series.
