Unless someone decides to divulge information on an actual 'deal' between MS and Namco, it's very dumb to say "oh, MS must obviously be moneyhatting them".
I think for some games, it's a case of right place, right time. X360 got RR6 because Ridge Racer has always been one of those good "next gen" games. Namco simply built a Ridge Racer next-gen engine, made one for X360, one for PS3. No muss, no fuss.
As for the other games such as ES and AC6, the actual decent exclusives, MS did get a Japanese Bundle for ES together, so I assume MS did atleast promise Namco the bundles, and showed them how much hype was building for Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and Namco jumped in.
And finally, for AC6, I feel that Namco did this primarily because of the fact that AC6 will sell REALLY, REALLY well in the US and Europe, and Namco wanted the precieved top-software selling system at that time, and it's the X360 (due to high software tier rates). So they made a good decision there.
Beautiful Katriami? No idea....I don't get that one. I think, though, Microsoft was able to coerce them with the game due to promising XBLA implementation, and showed them the XBLA statistics. Many, many, companies are now beginning to do what Namco is doing by porting a good software title to XBLA since the media is stored forever, and will sell forever.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
