[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'm not downplaying Nintendo's quality JRPGs. I'm buying both when they release here. But Nintendo did not see a market for them here. Xenoblade Chronicles will be sold exclusively through GameStop. The Last Story isn't even being published by Nintendo in the US, it's by XSEED. There's little faith in the games selling well by them, similar to how Sony had little faith in Demon's Souls, letting Aksys publish it and From Software straight up disassociating with them and creating a "new IP" called Dark Souls (by law names aren't copyrighted, so they could make it seem like a sequel while pretending like it had nothing to do with Demon's Souls to begin with to stay out of trouble with Sony.
Even Valkyria Chronicles, a Segagame, went from a fan favorite on PS3 to sequels on the PSP. I don't blame the publishers for trying their best to cater to their audiences. Some genres just sell better. It really isn't their fault that people want to buy shooters and racing games, but that's exactly what they'll publish since that's what people want. This is the main reason why I enjoy third party games more. Often they're catered to my tastes moreso than a game like Uncharted or Gears of War would be. Even Nintendo want to publish what sells (Mario, Zelda and Mii's). It's a business so I don't blame them. But every now and again a first party game does come along that looks spectacular like The Last Story (I'm a wee bit of a Sakaguchi fan) and it's always a nice treat.
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