Well i don’t think they’d have so much trouble on the space for the reasons you specified before anymore. Most of it would today probably be taken up with voices and/or movies.
I think that era in gaming is passed though. The future for rpgs doesn’t include point-and-click (except on fanbased ones such as www.hero6.com …shamless plugin). The future is sadly BG2 style with most emphasis on fighting and only tersuary emphasis on rp (the one good rp one of that genre, planescape: tournament failed to get much in the way of money, but imo it was for other reasons, not its more emphais on rp, bur reguardless because of its failure companies are loathe to spend much on even slightly heavier than bg2 rp titles), atleast in the US.
Japan, on the other hand has many rpgs, however few get trasnlated over for various reasons. Too closely tied with Japanese soceity for mass audiences, too bizarre in their opions for mass audiances, too unkown, poorly done (which is good…i don’t like poorly done rpgs), don’t have the cash to trasnlate it nor have any good contacts with companies to translate it. This is why few date sims have been ported, because companies can’t see them outside Japan going to a mass audiance (believe me, if a company thought they could make a good profit, they’d translate it). The problem is ironically that that when many americans think of them, they think of the H-game ones and that’s not good for mass marketing when you have parents involved as well as people who don’t care for h-games.
So IMO beyond Bethsada and maybe Troika, most of my hope for the future of rpgs lies in the hope that more get translated from japan. Its sad considering America was where RPGs were founded basically.