People don't seem to be able to accept the truth here. Yes, Final Fantasy XV bombed hard in Japan. The game had a very long development cycle and must have cost a lot of money to make.
If Japanese developers had any sense of self-preservation they would switch to Nintendo. The best selling Dragon Quest game came out on the DS and not the more powerful PSP or PS3. A game doesn't need to be on a powerful console for it to sell a lot or be good. Pokémon Red and Blue and Pokémon Gold and Silver offer more content than 99% of the modern games. Pokémon Sun and Moon only took around 3 years to develop (with part of the team making a remake of Ruby and Sapphire as well) and it absolutely destroyed Final Fantasy XV in sales. The budget of Pokémon Sun and Moon will have been only a fraction of Final Fantasy XV.
Square Enix is only hurting themselves by releasing games exclusively on the PS4 (and the XBONE). Kingdom Hearts 3 is another game that is taking forever to develop and I'm pretty sure Dragon Quest XI will see many delays as well because of the PS4 version. I can say the same for Capcom. Street Fighter V was a total flop. Bandai Namco meanwhile worked together with Nintendo and made Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS (best selling in the franchise) and Pokken Tournament (surprisingly outsold Street Fighter V on the PS4). Koei Tecmo made Hyrule Warriors which was one of the most successful Dynasty Warrior games in years.
The 3DS should have gotten a mainline Final Fantasy game, but it didn't and only game companies can be that stupid to ignore such a large market segment.
(Japanese) developers have always put blind faith in Playstation consoles, it's time they do the same for the Switch.
And why on earth is Square Enix supporting Microsoft more than Nintendo? Their anti-Nintendo bias will hit them hard in the future if they don't watch out. We get it Square, you don't like cartridges, get over it because your most famous franchise is getting trashed by "the guys who still make cartridge games". Oh the irony.
The advantages are all there:
- Less competition due to absence of games made by Western developers.
- Huge market share in Japan, their home country and the main demographic of most of their games (relative to the country size).
- Weaker hardware and thus cheaper development costs and faster development cycles.
- Both mobile and home console combined.
"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides
