it's a system seller in japan, and for me

plus an exclusive final fantasy would help the PS4 dominate japan

Yea I expect that for Japan. I have not bought a FF game since FFX, but this one looks interesting. If it's an exclusive and it's a quality title all the more reason for me to get it day one, and I have faith in the team behind this game.

It's a system seller most definatly. It sells about the same in the west as GoW or GeoW and gets over a million sales in Japan in one day alone.

It has not been the primary factor in any generation. JRPGs were bigger on the SNES than on the NES, despite the NES having a larger install base. The best selling Final Fantasy game was on the PS1, not the PS2, despite the PS2's larger install base. Final Fantasy XIII sales on the PS3 trounced its sales on the 360 in North America even though 360 has a huge advantage there.

Unless you are making shovelware or something that is extremely mainstream you don't just want to hit the platform with the largest install base. You want to hit the platform where your audience is.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Right now you have only established that Square has declined, which is something we already know. They ruled the roost in the '90s in a way they just don't anymore. But to prove that there is a decline of JRPGs and not just of Square-Enix you would have to show that total sales are down despite the fact that there are more JRPGs now being released across a wider variety of platforms. Have big budget JRPGs declined? Definitely, again mostly down to the fall of Square and the genre moving primarily to handhelds. Has the genre as a whole declined? I'm not at all sure that's the case. It looks to me like the average JRPG has always been niche, they have always sold the same (a few hundred thousand units or less), and there are more of them being made now than ever.

It's not even particularly useful to talk about how JRPGs perform when we are talking specifically about Final Fantasy here. It has always performed far, far ahead of other JRPGs. "People don't care about JRPGs anymore" isn't really a great argument for not making Versus exclusive to this or that system. Neither is, "The PS4 is not the PS1." It's mere handwaving. If you're right and the biggest JRPG of them all is trending niche not just because of Square's ineptitude with the series but because JRPGs themselves are on the wane, then making it multiplatform doesn't really help. You might as well suggest that they just stop making big budget Final Fantasy games altogether and stick to cheap handheld or mobile games.

The best selling Final Fantasy game was on the PS1, not the PS2, despite the PS2's larger install base.

Exactly. That was the golden era. You might not agree with it but it was there.Most people regard then as the golden era of jrpg's. I'm stating to wonder if you're just arguing the point for the sake of it. I gave you links and sales figures to back up my points.

The PS4 is not the PS1." It's mere handwaving.

How? I'm looking back at sales and games, you're just predicting. Sorry, facts beats predictions everyday of the week and on weekends. I understand you feel that the jrpg's as a whole haven't declined but show me. You mentioned many more smaller rpg's are being released that sell a couple hundred thousand that weren't FF titles and I showed you titles that sold much more that also weren't FF titles.  I conceded the FFXIII versus isn't a spin off, try conceding that there was a golden era so we can get back to the op

Though I see many people arguing about how the game would sell more multiplatform (no shit), that could be altered depending under what circumstances the game is released. If the game, let's say, was released as a PS4 exclusive around the time it launches, the game could actually see higher sales than if it was multiplatform.

We often see that games at the beginning of a consoles life selling far more than we would have expected from a multi release, since the game is of high quality and has little competition from other games.
Just look at Fall of Man. It was a completely new IP and, thanks to being released during the PS3's launch era, went on to sell over 4 million copies. Final Fantasy could really do with that kind of boost at the moment.

I could easily believe Sony and SE coming to some form of agreement that locks down exclusivity, with SE gaining the benefits of being a launch title and Sony agreeing to promote the game in some form.

In the end we can only guess until E3, so we will see ^^

The effect is minimal in reality.  The Nextbox could have Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean and Final Fantasy exclusive games and the general public in Japan still would probably not buy it.  It will help against Nintendo in marketshare but this gen has cnovinced me Japan will never buy into a Western console so it's not like it would really magically help the PS4 dominate imo.

First of all, why is everyone so shocked about the estimated budget?

Second of all, since they seem to have stopped investing in the game, do we get a second disc to finish the story with just pages of story to read?

Way to miss my point, which was that a larger user base didn't help Final Fantasy sell more this generation or last generation. You indicated that there is something anomalous about install base not mattering this generation, when it's a pretty basic thing that isn't specific to a particular time or place. Why do you think Xbox has gotten all kinds of visual novels and shmups even though it has rarely cracked 5,000 weekly sales in Japan? Because the audience for those games were established early in the system's life and because, as niche titles, they wouldn't sell any more units on the DS or Wii or PS3 than they do on the 360. If you start porting those games to everything, there's a good chance you would get a very similar number of overall sales and be out all those porting costs on top of it.

Again, you're missing my point. You cherry picked a few titles, all from Square except for SCE title that never got a sequel with which to compare it, and said, "Look at that decline!" I could just as easily point out that Dragon Quest IX was the best selling DQ ever, and other series such as Persona and Phantasy Star have also been having record performances this generation. That would also be cherry picking, and it proves nothing for the genre as a whole. To prove there is an overall decline you would have to show that the average JRPG is in fact selling less.

You claimed that JRPGs used to be major system sellers and they are no longer. In fact, they never were. A single game called Final Fantasy VII was a major system seller, and a lot of other JRPGs on the system benefited from that as FF7 fans looked for something similar after finishing that game. But try telling N64 or Saturn fans that there was a JRPG golden age. Today, JRPGs are primarily on handhelds but have proliferated across every system, even the 360. It is certainly a bad thing for the future of the genre that the biggest games are still Pokemon, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy, and that one of those has fallen on hard times this generation. But if the average JRPG sells basically the same number of units as it always has, and there are many more of them than there used to be, then I wouldn't call that a decline.

And I haven't predicted anything here. I've only stated the fact that Versus is going to primarily sell on its own merits whatever system it finally appears on. Most games have finite appeal, and you can't just assume that more ports = more sales. Especially when the fan base for the franchise is very heavily concentrated on one platform. The idea that it's suicidal to start developing a game for a system that hasn't launched yet makes no sense, otherwise no one would ever make games for new systems. When you say "The PS4 isn't the PS1" you are making it sound like it was a brilliant decision for Square to abandon Nintendo for the PS1, and while in retrospect it was, it was also far from a given that it would be the smashing success we now know it turned out to be.

Like many have said all over the place for this rumour, a $120+ million budget for a PS4 exclusive is illogical and extremely unlikely. Unless that number was in yen, which would put it at around $1.25 million and that's definitely a lot less than they've already invested in this game, so that's extremely unlikely as well.