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selnor on 27 March 2008
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ookaze said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
RolStoppable said:

The issue with JRPGs is that they are a genre that traditionally has development cycles of 18-24 months (or longer), thus developers try to make sure that they make their game for a console with a big enough userbase to easily turn a profit. It's perfectly normal that there are next to none JRPGs in the first year after the Japanese launch of each system, this isn't just unique to this generation. Just look back at PS2, GC, Xbox or even further.

Now there are only few JRPGs early in a generation, but in return their are boatloads at the end of a generation. Well, for the winning system that is. Late high profile releases like for example Star Ocean (SNES, 1996), Final Fantasy IX (PS1, late 2000) and Final Fantasy XII (PS2, late 2006) are perfectly normal. Besides these top tier games there are tons of smaller JRPGs like Tales of, Shin Megami Tensei etc.

What I am trying to say is that JRPG developers are among the last ones to switch to the next generation and they usually pick the winning system. A common misconception is that the system that gets the most JRPGs wins, in reality the opposite is the case. A system has to be already winning, before it gets the flood of JRPGs.


What are your thoughts on titles such as Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, and Lost Odyssey then? Obviously the 360 is older than its two competitors but 1~2 years in is not the end of the generation.


Let's see.

Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey were paid by MS, and used all the pime knowledge that MS had on their console, so of course they could release them soon (and yet they were late, as these games were made for launch (at least Blue Dragon). That's because the development on these games started as soon as MS funded Mistwalker. This makes these games 3 years in the making, with the best help you can get, as it came straight from MS, internal knowledge.

Then there's the "secret" deal with Namco Bandai. Perhaps you believe MS BS, but I don't, and most people can't say with a straight face that MS didn't pay for all these Namco "exclusives". Of course, Namco may have realized too late the errors of their ways, as now they have to port their game to PS3, which is not well either, to make money. Too bad for them.

This secret deal allowed them to start their JRPG for the XB360 soon enough.

Even ToS for XB360 is more than 3 years in the making.

Remember MS had 1 year head start, and had the first SDK available, well before their console launch, and I bet even way before for their partners. Which explains why surprisingly, Namco and Mistwalker are the first to put out the first JRPG on XB360.

 

The two other consoles being not even 18 months old, it should be obvious why their JRPG only start to appear now. It is even worse for the Wii, as most developments didn't even start three months after its launch. Which is why you see crappy JRPG ports for it, so close after the releases on PS2. Most other JRPG for it also have very poor content. Of course, all these are destined to fail, and I hope they'll all fail hard.

The Namco thing is Sony's fault. They took alot of their developers in house. They pissed Namco off.