Well, it was never all that dormant in Japan. The original trilogy came out in 2001 and the DS remakes are what we got. Since the remakes in 2006/2007, there have only been two years in Japan where there wasn't a new release of some sort. (
There's a timeline to the right of the games section on the wiki article.)
They've been re-releasing the original trilogy on other platforms (iOS, Virtual Console) for years so the 3DS remaster is just a port of those with the updated (but not as charming as sprites, imo) art. The new games are just... more of the same, really!
The only games we've missed out on are spinoffs, which doesn't seem like too big a deal. I don't think the original Edgeworth spinoff did well here so we didn't get its sequel and DaiGyakuten... well, I haven't played it for myself yet but I have a lot of friends who said it didn't feel the same as the other games and I didn't hear much about it even in Japanese fandom. I think the headache of localizing it probably wouldn't have been worth the few sales they could expect. But it's exciting to hear they're already committed to localizing the next real sequel in the series! I was a little worried they wouldn't.
Anyway, I'm definitely excited for all the new content but I never really thought there was a significant dearth in AA stuff, even in the West. :x