Whether it be by paying off Japanese companies or the Playstation 3's late entry, many of the Japanese companies and developers made games exclusively for Microsoft. Companies like Namco Bandai, Square Enix, and others gave Sony's competitor exclusive games. However, no matter how much money and advertising Microsoft threw out in Japan, it wasn't enough to put those exclusive games in the positive sales column.

Eternal Sonata from Namco Bandai didn't make enough on the competitor's system so they ended up having to port it to the Playstation 3. Tales of Vesperia, another former exclusive to the 360 also did financially poor the first time around and also had to be ported to the PS3 to make up the costs. And the Tales series hasn't hit the 360 since and according to the series producer, the franchise won't be going back to a Microsoft system any time soon.

Much like Namco Bandai, Square Enix also felt the pinch and learned the lesson of going Microsoft exclusive. Their game, Last Remnant was originally planned for both the PS3 and 360. The 360 one came out and did so poorly they decided the franchise wasn't even worth the effort. Then they brought out Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Again, much like previous Japanese games on the 360, it failed to make profit and had to be ported to the PS3 to cover the cost.



What this all boiled down to is an American company, with an American system trying to sell the games the people want on a system the people don't. In time, it seems as reality with the lack of sales the support to Sony began to return. And even this late in the PS3 life cycle and early into the PS4's, Japanese developers are echoing their want to work with Sony with little to no plans to go to their closest competitor in the exclusive sense this time around. Hideo Baba, the Tales series producer officially stated he's in early planning for Tales games for the Playstation 4 and not the Xbox 1. And recently, Atlus has went on a Persona storm, which culminated Persona 5 coming to the Playstation 3 exclusively. Then you have Aksys Games, realizing their fighting games don't sell well on Microsoft's brand have been making exclusive annoucments for Sony as of late such as BlazBlue: Chronophantasma and and Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold.



These are no coincidences by any means. But you be the judge on that. 

http://www.playstationgamerleague.com/index.php?/page/index.html/_/sony/have-japanese-developers-finally-realized-they-r85

Japanese devs don't need Microsoft or Sony. They don't necessarily need Nintendo consoles either. Actually, they just don't need consoles at all, unless they're trying to appeal to an international market.

However, they still prefer mobile plarforms over consoles :(

If they learned anything it's that they should make more games multiplat. Vesperia sold alright in the us and Europe in comparison to tales rpgs that have been brought to the us and Europe on ps3. Star ocean actually sold a bit more according to vgchartz on 360,combined the it sold over a million. Eternal sonata should have been a multiplat as well as the last remnant. Japanese developers don't just need sony they need to do things a bit different.The sales they could get on other consoles by making the games multiplat is a better option that just sticking to one console exclusively.

Sony and Nintendo are also in trouble though as these Japanese developers are starting to focus more on mobile phone games than they are on consoles altogether.

but isn't that what they are going for. These large companies cannot survive on mobile alone. Mobile cannot sustain a 200+ company forever. They need Console manufacturers in order to survive. All of these 3rd Party Japanese companies attempted to rewrite what was already put in stone, and paid for it in profit loss.

Nintendo is the only Publisher that is completely self sustaining. Wii survived purely on 1st party software, as did the gamecube for the most part. That is very different then the other two.

MS is completely dependant upon 3rd Parties to remain relavent and Sony and 3rd Party have a mutual parasitic relationship. What I mean by this is Sony in previous gens was famous for exclusive 3rd Party games. Many of those games have become synonymous with the console. The game's seem to struggle outside of Sony's comfort. Square Enix tried to branch away, every single effort tanked. Last Remnant, Star Ocean 4, etc. Its kinda hard to sell a game when your usual fanbase resides elsewhere entirely. Was a very stupid move. So many of these japanese games floundered terribly off of Sony's consoles.

Most of those games were going to come to PlayStation regardless of how well they sold on 360

Every main console Tales game finds its way to PlayStation(Symphonia,Graces, Vesperia)

I believe the only reason the last remnant was canceled on ps3 was because there was too much work to be done. Square found themselves in an awkward postition. The Last Remnant already ran horrid on 360 so you could imagine how much worse the ps3 version was(they would've needed to fix it) and secondly, Sony wouldn't allow it to be released so late on their console unless it had some new exclusive content and i guess Square decided to can it

But yea, PlayStation(Home Consoles) is the JRPG box

I hope so, because I need japanese developers in my life.

I don't necesarrily think Microsoft is completely dependent on third parties, at least not as much as PS4 is.  In my social group the majority of poeple are  getting the PS4, however nto one of them have said it's for Sony Exclusives.  The people who aren't getting the ps4 and getting the Xbox one is for Halo 5 or Forza.  Mostly the prior.  

The thing is Japanese developers struggle enough getting a game on one consoles, putting it on multiple ones cannot be lucrative. It cost money still to put things on multiple platforms, so many fees attached to it that most don't recognize. Why not just target the LARGEST demographic for your fanbase and save yourself the headache?  Final Fantasy XIII...... honestly I whole heartedly believe the game would have sold exactly the same had it been exclusive, perk being a more refined product and less production cost.

The worst thing introduced this generation is that idea that every game should/needs to be multiplat in order to be successful. Its a sham, and always has been. A self fullfilling prophecy. By SquareEnix, Rockstar, Capcom taking this bait and making their games multiplat they set off a chain reaction. Splintering fanbases across all systems, which doomed the rest of the generation to HAVE to make everything multiplat in order to even break even. Unfortunate truth is this is bad business for most developers out there, hence more studios have closed this gen than in any other. Especially the Japanese studios. They were mostly comprised of Mid sized teams. Ubisoft, EA, Activision have only been able to produce these AAA multiplat because they have 500+ employees churning them out.

Japanese devs in particular need to concentrate on one console, the ones with the highest concentration of their theoretical fanbase. Namco learned this with Tales, SE even understands this now although they keep chasing the pipe dream of mobile sustaining them. I will bet money.....that MGSV sells less(or just about equal to) than MGS4. MGS4 sold on par with its predecessors on a system with half the userbase. Persona 4 Golden......sold almost the same as what it did on PS2 on PSVita. This is saying something. Follow the largest "fanbase" not the "userbase". Chasing the userbase leads to companies being spread so thin that the product is not even worth it anymore.