I'm a shoot em up arcade noob, which means that I was always crap at them, but I loved them so much when I was younger that my crappiness didn't even matter. These days I don't have the time for arcades and there's only so many shoot em up games I can play on my SNES emulator, so I've been looking for a HD game filled with all that Japanese quirkiness. The PS3 is my main platform, it's also region free and so I was looking for some shoot em up games for the system and my search came up short. I then search for some on the 360 and I find heaps of these crazy Japanese games, but the 360 isn't region free and I can't find any of the titles at retail. 

This little journey made me realise that the 360s library is jam packed with heaps of Japanese games that never leave the country or die at retail when their brought over and that makes me sad because it means that I can't play them. So is their an actual reason why the 360 keeps getting heaps of Japanese support? Why aren't the titles multi-platform? Why aren't more Japanese companies using the Phyre Engine? Can I mod my 360 to play games from other regions?

Yeah, there are a lot of shmups on the 360, especially in Japan. Maybe it's easier for developers to port the arcade games to the 360? You can actually find quite a few that have western releases as well such as Deathsmiles, or the various Raiden games, etc. Just search around. Sometimes the games released are region-free such as Espgaluda 2. If you check somewhere like Play-asia.com, then they usually list if game is region-free or only playable in certain regions, it's pretty helpful.

The 360 is definitely the console of choice if you are a shmup fan. I have a JP 360 (as I am in Japan), so I have no problems getting the games (only finding the time to play them all!)

I'm going to take a guess and say that it's probably due to Microsoft wanting to expand their user base in Japan more than anything (otherwise I don't see why they wouldn't make a western release).

Seems like you're out of luck.

NTSC and NTSC-J 360s have quite a few retail SHMUPs. Maybe you can find a few on XBLA ?

Like Rez HD, Ikaruga, Shoot 1UP

Guwange will release soon too.

EDIT: Just saw that Raiden Fighters Ace will probably arrive in late November for PAL consoles

That's weird, I was just thinking about how the 360 has kind of died off in getting the Japanese games that I like, but that's because I'm a jRPG fan.  Used to be the 360 got a good number of JRPG's that I was jealous of every year but now I can't think of a single one coming out for the system (not even like a single one I'm jealous of, I mean I can't think of a single one coming out for the 360 at all).

But you're right, as far as SHMUPs go 360 really is the place to be, long as you can find some way to play the ones that never make it over here.

@Doobie-Wop

We something in common because I'm a Shmup noob too. However I own a few on the 360 that are available on XBLA. If you can make a Japanese account they have even more.

Isn't Time Crysis out for PS3? I'm not sure if it's any good, but the arcade Time Crysis games were brilliant.

There's also another Time Crysis game on the way aswell, with move support as far as I know.

The new one isn't out yet but the whole package (4games in total with one being new) will be released at Move launch this year..and yep TC is a lot of fun

When you say shootem ups are you talking about stuff like Raiden, 1942 and Einhander?  If so there's that anime shooter thing on the PSN can't remember what it was called.  I think it's a collection of 3 games where the girl is the thing moving around the screen shooting things.  It's made by Sony Online. If anyone knows what I'm talking about help me out :D

The Rockin' Android Gundemonium Collection.