The series in my opinion; isn't dead - it's just taken a route which old fans aren't familiar with.
At the end of the day, good series come and go; that's how industry works - if something didn't die, something new wouldn't take it's place.
I know people often look up to Final Fantasy games as an inspiration for their endeavours within game design, I myself do it to. However there are plenty of other series, which
are much better, which offer a different spin on a traditional RPG.
Take the 'Tales Of' series, it's brilliant - yet it is usually overlooked because Square Enix, is at the fore of traditional JRPG design.
But looking at the series, and looking back at where Final Fantasy had it's downfall - I'd say Final Fantasy 7 was a part of that.
Final Fantasy through to Final Fantasy VI, are all brilliant games, heck - Final Fantasy IV is at the top of most 100 Best RPG Lists. This was because they all stuck to a similar formula, and this began to change with Final Fantasy VII - obviously advancements had been made with the switch from SNES to PS1, and this was a good thing; however I feel that there was perhaps too much of a jump in the games formula, especially when you look further down the line at the PS1 to PS2 jump.
Final Fantasy VII, was a massive achievement of Square's part, and was perhaps the peak of Square's success. It bettered the ATB system, the materia system was brilliant and the storyline was one which we won't come across again - even SquareEnix's remake will not be on the same level. But, a lot of things were bad about it - really bad glitches, debugged areas and sometimes 'clunky' gameplay.
Final Fantasy 9, was a spiritual successor to the first final fantasy, it just has slightly different storyline - but most of the characters and terms are illusions back to the first game. This was incredibly well received, as it gave familiarity to older gamers of the franchise, and introduced those new to it - in a fun and exciting way (exactly what FF1 did, way back when). In my opinion, I feel that Final Fantasy 9 is the embodiment of the franchise - it is a perfect specimen for the company to adhere to.
All Final Fantasy's afterwards, changed the formula drastically, and don't even get me started about FF13 - it's linear style gameplay was terrible; the whole purpose of having a world is to explore it, not meander around in the same city, to then move onto the next in a line.
The Final Fantasy franchise which we all loved then died, but it created a Final Fantasy Franchise, which others love yet old traditionalists don't.
I just feel that perhaps, we shouldn't look at Square Enix to make the changes in the RPG's that we want. We should just create them ourselves.