Problems:
1) Lack of new-blood.
2) Accessibility
Possible Solutions:
1) This is a problem that has been inherently part of melty from it's beginning in America. The general solution that I believe most older members of this community take are "we need more fighting game players." Okay, that makes sense; if they played fighting games before they have an interest in fighters. They could probably learn the game relatively fast, also. But what if they hate the style/character design or what not. So, for years, the way this game has been promoted is "ignore the anime style, just play the game because it's fun." Furthermore, as I rudely found out my first year here and am still infamous for - people tend to actually hate on people who like anime and are playing the game because it's anime styled. Why? Because those players suck. They have never played fighters before, and if they take to reading the guide and getting into terms they don't understand they'll make up definitions for them and just write worthless stuff (which has to be moderated). You also get a degree of sadlife, which most people in the community don't want to be known for or associated with inside the community. Okay, yes, I understand this. However, at the same time (and a huge reason why Melty remains popular in Japan) is because a lot of the community takes from fans all over. This community doesn't just take random fighting gamer xyz and be like play melty.
I understand that it's easier for people to get along with other people they can talk the fighting game lingo to, and that it's easier to just leech off the SSFIV wave. However, rather than shun an appeal the game naturally has why not use it? Because you don't want an influx of new players that it'll take a year to teach how to play? But those players who's first fighting game is melty will be more dedicated to rising up in the community and also be the most dedicated to going out to events. Like Shinobi said, the scene is stagnant - there are plenty of us to accommodate to teaching people how to play this game, we're far from decline.
So here's my honest opinion, If you guys really want to build the scene you need to make it more hospitable to new players, incoming, who do not play SSFIV or other fighters. There are a ton of players right now that come from either doujin games and/or the anime community: such as SumAznDude, Pfhor, Myself, Kamina, (to my knowledge) and plenty others completely willing to hide the truth, no doubt. If you even look at our own top players, we have people like LK or Tonberry who come from Super Smash Brothers or Bellreisa who comes from IaMP. We have dozens more that hail from guilty, and yes, dozens that likely hail from Street Fighter. I'd say more than half of our community is built from people who had little interest in Street Fighter and more liked the style of Melty Blood (especially when you consider a lot of the older players played it when it had nothing to little to offer as a fighting game). Even in Japan, Garu told me that Waka plays melty because he is a siscon and loves Kohaku. Yoshino get's his handle name because he loves Da Capo. A ton of the top players play a lot of fighters, but a lot of them also only play melty, and that carries over to the scene as well.
So instead of promoting this game like Arcana Heart and saying "oh it's fun, ignore all the anime, the system is what you want." - why not promote it both ways? If people naturally like the fast-paced aesthetic nature of the game and perhaps even it's background than it's likely they will be more dedicated to learning the game. I know this is hard for some of you who have been playing fighters for decades to accept, but I'm asking you to consider the living example writing this post and also your own fellow members in the community who come from the same background.
What this community needs is guidance for newer more dedicated individuals out there. To help do that we could have another BBG after the cold dies down to generate more Melty Blood-only hype. BBG is by far one of the most fun experiences of my life, and it can continue to be for others, and I will personally put out the money to host that event and do my best to work with a couple others to contain the hassle of getting it setup. This is not to say that we should not be recruiting other fighting games, that is certainly easier and fine and it's own right, but lets try all approaches. We need to get it known - even if someone came across MBAC on computer or something, people may not assume there is a scene for this game in existence, let alone tournaments/guides/and more information. We should be working to promote it not only in the fighting game community but get new players into it as well.
2) Even I cannot ignore the problem of accessibility. While a PS3/360 (or full-blown American) release would be quite nice I don't think it would change *that much*. It would help grow us without a doubt, but I don't think accessibility is a control exactly "out of our hands". Even with a regional release I see ourselves in a similar situation in a year's time. By saying we need a console release on either an American or region free or current system lock you're saying there is essentially nothing we can do to help grow the scene. I think everyone and their mother has a PS2 laying around somewhere and it's not exactly hard or expensive to get one if you don't. It's also quite easy to make a modded memory card and rip a copy of the game to your computer and patch it to work with it. Anyone could do this, really, and if we had someone willing to do this for anyone (an informal-"hey talk to this guy if you need it"; to avoid legal issues) available it would be easier to get the game out. I know people like Rayza, Lolisauce, and several others have worked their hardest to get people out there with memory cards and PS2 sticks to help build the scene, and if enough of us worked to do that and bring our own PS2s out and such to tournys I think we can overcome the accessibility by making it appear easy to get the game (because really - it is, it just takes a few minutes more effort than going to the store to buy a copy).
And I really, really, am not blaming anyone in specific (I ask that please no one take this the wrong way), but the fact that Garu won Evo probably killed any chance of this game has of having an American release in the next 2 years (and considering Ecole's augmentation away from Melty, probably for the entire franchise). By having a Japanese player win it sorta said "there is no serious competition in America". Or that the American scene is not large enough (as Japanese are largely nationalistic assholes who would look for an excuse not to release their game internationally). So, I would stop hoping on that and start doing what we can within our own power.
Through following our own guidance (as Fox mentioned) and not just taking months of a break off the game at a time, hitting training mode every other day for 20 minutes before bed, working around a tough schedule to go out and play and follow up with people remotely interested, I think we can see an increase once again. I personally saw atleast 3 new faces at Summer Jam and unfortunately half the community wasn't there to generate the hype for the finals that would make these people really hold their first event in the fondness of memory I hold for BBG. Unfortunately unlike Shinobi (and probably most people), I don't think it's important to compete with other fighting game communities as much as it is to do our own thing (like we always have). Chances are the people willing to come out to melty events every tournament, drive a certain number of hours, spend atleast 100$, and be dedicated to promoting our game aren't the people who want it on next gen systems and want big money pots in order to play.