interesting article for consideration from Polygon writer Kazuma Hashimoto. here’s the opening:
In February, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida sat down in an interview with YouTuber SkillUp as part of a tour to promote the next installment in the Final Fantasy series. During the interview, Yoshida expressed his distaste for a term that had effectively become its own subgenre of video game, though not by choice. “For us as Japanese developers, the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term, as though we were being made fun of for creating these games, and so for some developers, the term can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past,” he said. He stated that the first time both he and his contemporaries heard the term, they felt as though it was discriminatory, and that there was a long period of time when it was being used negatively against Japanese-developed games. That term? “JRPG.”
The question is: Are we asked to change it? The quotes hark back to Japanese first impression of the west using the term. They did not state that they want us to use a different term, Yoshi-P recalled his teams impressions of foreign reactions to their products from 20 years ago. The referenced Interview with the Xenoblade Devs also does not echo the Sentiment Yoshi-P put forth. As far as I can see all articles putting JRPG out as a discriminatory term are referencing the same single Interview.
I haven’t really found anything else that touches on it either, but I do still understand the point. The idea that no one else went on record discussing it doesn’t make it a non-issue though.