[QUOTE="NeonNinja"]
[QUOTE="iHarlequin"]
Their market is the gamers that like shooters, racers and now, the Kinect, why would they encourage the development of jRPG games or platformer if it doesn't cater to their main audience? I mean, sure, it'd make great SW brag material, but the larger portion of the 360 owners want shooters and racers -- and Microsoft does have very good exclusives in those genres.
iHarlequin
Let's be honest here, is ANYONE encouraging the development of JRPGs? Nintendo has three of them and they didn't want to release them in the US. I do give MS credit though, man. They at least had an interest in the genre this gen with Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon and even initially funding for Infinite Undiscovery. But the damn games don't sell if they aren't called Final Fantasy.
You're right, that's all it is, SW bragging rights. But at the end of the day, money talks and MS' making plenty of it with only a handful of exclusives.
To be fair, Nintendo has released two quality jRPGs in the last six months and has another one up and coming that I'm betting will be good as well. Sony has Valkyria Chronicles, Disgaea, Demon's Souls and those that are only released in Japan (Arto series). Microsoft had Lost Odyssey, which I wasn't particularly fond of (combat system specially) and Infinite Undiscovery, which I bought with my console and, although I liked it, it's pretty bland and does nothing particularly well or different. And what you said is correct: neither LO or IU had massive sales; in fact, they were minimal when compared to any of their exclusives in the racing/shooting categories.
Microsoft caters to it's audience, as does Nintendo and Sony. Well, all three try their best, anyway. There's absolutely no good reason for MS to start developing games in some niche genre that only a handful of gamers (Lost Odyssey sold relatively well, at roughly 700k, but it's still far behind the 5m - 10m sale figures that Microsoft's shooter/racer franchises have achieved). It's time to face it: you make exclusives that cater to the masses, and let third party developers grab what they can from all consoles in the smaller genres.
I see what you're saying.
The way I see it, pretend like you're signing up for a music service like iTunes. You can sign up for iTunes that offers lots of different music, or you can sign up for MusicMediaSongs (I made that up) that only offers music from the top 10 billboards. Which would you choose? I would choose iTunes for the variety, because what I listen to isn't found on the top 10 billboards.
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