Riachu on 10 June 2008
| mrstickball said: Bladeneo, is for the most part, right. The Japanese market for hardcore games is on the decline. We've seen SE, and other major J-Devs begin to look toward the West. Guess which system offers the best survivability for Japanese games in the West currently? The X360. Not only does it have a large hardware lead in the West, but Microsoft seems most willing to work with Eastern Developers on ensuring their product makes a succuessful debut in the West - both in terms of userbase, and "moneyhatting" All a developer cares about is making enough money from their project to eat. And guess which one is more likely to work of the 2 HD consoles? The 360. Simple comparison for the developers: Microsoft: Lead in the West in terms of total users + software attach ratio for the next 2 years (forseeable). Willing to help developers financially to put their projects on the 360. Sony: Will not lead for another 2 years. Only recently has it surged in sales (and even then, it's not by a whole lot). Difficult system to work with, Sony unwilling to moneyhat. Lead time for a JRPG: 2-3 Years So whenever SO4, and these other JRPG projects were greenlit, the PS3 hadn't started out, and looked god-awful in terms of sales, attach rate was tanking, and the Eastern markets looked like they had rejected HD wholesale, so they looked into Microsoft's Western portfolio, and thought they'd survive better. Like Bladeneo said, it makes perfect sense. If your a fanboy, and don't understand development cycles, then you wouldn't understand that game platforms aren't decided 3 weeks before an announcement like this was made. |
