But, I mean, you wouldn't really use the lack of visual novels like Ace Attorney or Zero Escape series on consoles to judge the genre, right?
Or strategy games, or puzzle games. Those are other genres that are bigger on portables these days.
Tbh, there's quite a bit of overlap between PCs and portables in the sorts of games they do well.
I see where the gap is being felt, because alot of these other genres were never so big on home consoles, so the lack of truly great heavy hitters on consoles is really obvious. Every E3, very few games for portables are going to get too much focus, so people aren't thinking of them as much.
Tbh though, the whole HD jump killing AA development and all those increased costs makes me happy that the DS and PSP were options. I've seen people say that it allowed companies to run away from HD development, but I don't really see those same games getting developed without portables.
To give you an idea of what I'm talking about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breath_of_Fire#Reception
Not sure how accurate those sales numbers are, but Capcom in 2010 saying the Breath of Fire series was their most successful RPG series at 3.1 million units sold by the fifth game seems pretty dire. And tbh, it's more of these rpgs that are more obviously missing from consoles: they don't sell like Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts or Dragon Quest in Japan, but they're damn good, have the support of a major publisher, etc.
So it's a mix of those sorts of games becoming the TWEWY, Radiant Historia, and hell, even Kingdom Hearts BBS (it's bascially as mainline as the numbered releases) on portable consoles, along with the fact that the biggest hitters, like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, going away.
Alot of the console jrpgs that DO become bigger, like Persona, or Xenoblade, would probably have qualified and really successful examples of those sorts of games, but because the biggest hitters never really came, they sorta became said biggest hitters.
The really shitty crap has always been there, relies on small budgets and fans that are willing to pay a ton for a bunch of stuff to make a profit. They're just more visible now because of lack of region lock, importing, and the dearth of those bigger titles to hide that crap.
tl;dr: Your Wild Arms, Xenosagas, Breath of Fires, NEVER sold well enough to ever continue onto HD consoles, especially the 1st gen of HD consoles. The games that did sell well enough were either better suited to go/stay portable for sales/audience (Dragon Quest, Pokemon) or disappointed/delayed forever (FF for all last gen until 14 2.0?, FFV13, KH3, etc.)
You're overrating the previous success of the genre
