For people who are fans of jRPGs, the last two generations had one simple answer - Playstation 1 & 2.  Xbox had the shooters and sports games, Nintendo had the kiddy games (besides a few), and Sony had all the genres.

Now things are changing, and people like me who only care about a shooter once in a while, are thinking about buying a 360 - mainly with the MistWalker titles.  Do you think that we will see a spike a spike during that last week of August for the new jRPG fans that jump aboard the 360 ship? 

It's a title whose addition to the library might help to get me off the 360/PS3 fence. I like what I've seen of it (although to be honest, that's just the cinematics. I have no clue about the gameplay.) Something tells me it won't create a noticeable spike in US 360 sales, though. Seems a little bit outside the system's core demographic.

blue dragon is a must have for RPG fans..i could see it pushing 360's

I think this fall has a very strong and diverse line up for the 360. With Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, and Lost Odyssey (all JRPGs), you can see that Japanese developers are noticing how strong the 360 brand is in NA, and they want to capitalize on that. In it's opening week in Japan, Blue Dragon managed 4th place in software with 83k and the 360 moved almost 38k in hardware. Blue Dragon has sold to almost 50% of the entire 360 user base in Japan, which is impressive. I think this will help push sales. If you like Blue Dragon, you should definitely check out Eternal Sonata/Trusty Bell and Lost Odyssey. SquareEnix is also making The Last Remanent for 360/PS3.

Blue Dragon is coming out during a period of amazing 360 releases that it'll likely be one of many titles helping to sell many 360s.

No. Massive affect, Forza Bioshck will push sales. Blue dragon is way to kiddy to do well on 360 in usa, kinda how that rave game was great but a sales failure (vida p something).

Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Et Sonata and maybe other Mistwalker projects will definitely improve sales, but the most important things is if they will sell as a much as it should. Mistwalker is still a third party (they received support from microsoft, but from what i´ve read they are still a third party) so if their support doesn´t end in good profits, then no more JRPGs.

On a personal level I have a strong distaste for Blue Dragon, but I am very interested in Eternal Sonata, and am waiting to hear more for Lost Odyssey. Meanwhile the PS2 and Wii are each getting a great strategy RPG this year though, with Soul Nomad (PS2, by Nippon Icchi), and Fire Emblem 10 (Wii, by Intelligent Systems/Nintendo). And personally I'm praying that Konami's unnamed Wii RPG is Suikoden VI. :D

My take is very different. I love JRPG, good ones that is. XB360 fans advice I always take with a grain of salt, because this is a MS console, and MS is the epitome of an astroturfing company, and mass manipulations of that order (like the channel stuffing they did in December). So when I heard raves and godly reviews about Blue Dragon, given who works in Mistwalker, I didn't pay attention and thought it was genuinely a must-have game. That's when I started investigating to buy a XB360. Then, I heard about the poor reliability, so now it's a big no-no, as if the game is so good, I'd like to keep it. Then, I heard about the japanese reselling the game and the console en masse, so sth is fishy. On a Nintendo console, I'd say this game would sell a lot in NA, but on the XB360, I'm not so sure. I also doubt it would sell consoles. It didn't develop a cult following like it should have, with so high scores, so I think it's just a good game, not must-have. The same kind of buzz is now around Lost Odyssey, but somehow, it's just related to graphics, again. So I still believe it's astroturfing mostly. Anyway, I still think Mistwalker is diluting their name to irrelevance by backing essentially the XB360 in Japan. We'll see if Blue Dragon sell a lot in NA, but somehow I doubt it, especially on XB360. This game is the complete contrary to the popular FPS genre on XB360 : kiddy, lots of text to read, japanese look (full of colour, not shades of brown and grey), cellshaded (the horror!), ... Now, there's Trusty Bell, which interests me too. And there, I'm pretty sure astroturfing is going on. Some people are going gaga about this game, which supposedly have ungodly music and beautiful graphics. Now I got some game footage from the demo, and it's nothing like the supposedly "USA XB360 fans that never liked JRPG before this one" described it. Again a good game it seems, but not the godly one they described. It's a Namco Action RPG, so it seems it will be very good, ToS was. Anyway, I hope this game come to the PS3, and it seems to me it's better than Blue Dragon. These 2 games are not system sellers in USA IMHO. If Blue Dragon was really this good and launched momentum, then Lost Odyssey will move more consoles in Japan. I'm still skeptical though. We'll know soon enough anyway.

Quick answer: No. Long answer: I sincerely doubt that BD will push a spike in system sales THAT WEEK. Maybe a few units though. I contemplate that Blue Dragon will move many many units (as has been indicated on various forums), but will be in conjunction with other games, at other times. Viva Pinata was one of those games. There was no ultra sales for the game, but I do believe it helped round the 360 image a little better. I do not have lofty hopes for Blue Dragon in the US. 500,000 units is what I project. Possibly more due to strong Nov-Dec sales in the US. But again, someone wanting a game such as BD will probably buy the system for BD + another big game, weather its Halo, GTAIV, Mass Effect, Madden 08, or something else. I do, however, hope that it sells far better than the 500k in the US. It looks like a fantastic game, and if BD sold real well in the US, we might get the chance to see more prominent non-Mistwaker JRPGs in the US. Mrstickball's great RPG Projection Countdown for sales: #1 - Mass Effect, 1,275,000 Units Sold (ala KOTOR1) #2 - Lost Odyssey, 675,000 Units Sold #3 - Blue Dragon, 520,000 Units Sold #4 - Trusty Bell, 365,000 Units Sold #5 - Two Worlds, 165,000 Units Sold #6 - Kingdom Under Fire: COD, 145,000 Units Sold #7 - Culdicept Saga, 75,000 Units Sold Each game will sell an extra copy due to me :) Ironic that this year alone, there will be more RPGs for the 360 than the Xbox had it's entire lifetime.