I’ll be honest, it took some effort to choke back the misplaced, childish, elitist indignation at the very gamers who nearly killed the 2D fighting genre over the last 15 years, who were suddenly interested in it again because they had nothing else to play. You know what I mean: Oh what? Now you guys care? But once I managed to slap myself into shape, I began to have some hope. Maybe this is what the 2D fighting market needed. 
Maybe the fact that we aren’t getting so many games these days has a few good points. Street Fighter IV did very well because of it – and no matter what anyone says, I doubt it would have done anywhere near as well had it been released alongside ten other Gears of War, Drake’s Fortune and Final Fantasy clones. So, what if people are buying because they have nothing else to buy? Some of them will say “ugh, what is this?” when they try to play it – but if just one tenth of them can decide that they like it, and stay interested enough to buy the next one, or maybe some similar games, then 2D fighting games will always have a place in the gaming market.
Another good example I can think of is BlazBlu, by Arc System Works. Arc System Works produced the seminal Guilty Gear series, one of the finest 2D fighting series in recent years. Guilty Gear had amazing anime-style, hi-resolution graphics, and one of the most rocking soundtracks in any videogame ever – but it barely even registered on the charts. Somewhere along the line Arc System Works lost the rights to work on the Guilty Gear series, but their newest title, BlazBlu, is said to be one of the craziest, most graphically polished 2D fighters ever released, and it’s doing quite well in the US. Again, I believe this is largely due to the fact that BlazBlu is one of the few new releases there in recent months. As far as I know, there are no plans for a PAL version of BlazBlu yet, but hopefully it will be here sooner rather than later and do just as well.
This month has been a very dry month as far as gaming goes, but with any luck, we’ll be getting The King of Fighters XII on the PS3 and Xbox 360 some time near the end of this month. This game has been drawing immense interest from gamers all around the world, not least of all because it’s the first in the series to be done in HD widescreen. Also, it’s still in proper 2D, hand-drawn format – not cel-shaded, fake 2D like Street Fighter IV. With any luck, the lack of other titles released around this time will give KOFXII more exposure than it would otherwise get, and perhaps gain it a few more fans, too.
So, in the end, I guess all I’m hoping for is that the sparse release schedules for modern games machines with turn people’s interest back towards certain neglected genres. I wonder what would happen if developers started releasing new graphic adventure games, like Monkey Island 6 or Space Quest 7, in this consumer climate.