Is Square-Enix making a mistake making 360 there go to system for rpgs?

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

Bitmap Frogs said:

Jo21 said:

in japan sales aren't stellar  and pretty much all 360 jrpg have sold way less  in america and even less in europe than in japan  (except lost odyssey).

and my point was to say UE 3 run best on PC running best on PC doesn't mean it was going to get there first even so it a delayed version of a multiplatform title.

and white knight chronicles have outsold all 360 jrpg in japan in 2 weeks, and have a chance of outselling lost odyssey worldwide (not likely unless hyped or advertise though).

 

What, no. Sure 360 jrpgs don't sell much in japan, the install base is really bad. But outside Japan, they've done good. LO is almost at 900k, BD is at 600k, TLR will get past 500k and will probably settle at 600k. Remember historically few jrpgs have done that much better unless belonging to one of the big four franchises (FF, DQ, KH, Pokemon). Pretty much every 360 jrpg has sold more outside Japan with the single exception of Vesperia - and Vesperia has yet to be released in Europe. But that's the whole point of it, SE had a bunch of HD titles in the pipeline and had to switch platform given how poorly the ps3 was and is performing. Sure it can nab 150k sales more off Japan, but the 360 has 10M more units out there than the ps3 outside Japan and that's where they make the money.

You ignore the realities of the marketplace and the development process Jo, the SaGa team is a small team. First they get out the easiest and most profitable SKU (360), then the easiest port available (PC) and finally they get to mess with the headaches of the ps3 version (which takes a long time and if they had waited for it it would have delayed the game). The SaGa team ain't no Rockstar, they can't have parallel development teams - they have to prioritize with revenue in mind.

Of course this is all moot - once they clear the HD projects already in the oven, they'll focus on the Wii.

Any way you look at it, these games were done for such a high budget but they didn't produce as high of dividends (move the units they should in Japan or Internationally).  And Square-Enix has always been a company who has focused on the Japanese market.  They can't make this excuse that suddenly since they're working on the 360 and their games aren't selling well that they're 'focusing on the American market'.  Just like Sakaguchi, they wanted Japan to jump on the 360 because they (and a number of Japanese developers) were pushing the system and its HD power.  Now this principle will kill their company if they took that attitude and they know it.  And with your examples of the 'big four' franchises, they are saturating Final Fantasy horribly with endless remakes/sequels/secondary games and KILLING Dragon Quest outside of Japan with horrible translations and localizations.

The fact that they should switch over to the Wii is obvious, just so they can sell more units.  But don't think their practices will change.  The recent announcement that Dragon Quest X will be going to Wii would have happened regardless of any other movement of Square-Enix, because Yuji Horii backed the DS and the Wii from the very beginning (Dragon Quest Monsters Joker, Rocket Slime, Dragon Quest Swords).  From here on, expect nothing to change from the from the rest of Square-Enix but Final Fantasy cross-overs and sequels to be produced for Wii, if the Square side starts making anything for Wii besides Crystal Chronicles.