They will not close it right away, it will be a year or so and then they will quietly make some excuse of combining absorbing the studio whatnot.  Do not every forget that MS is a huge corp and they have never been on the side of unions in their space.

It had 2 JRPG exclusives - Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey - from the Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.

I just do not remember any of those exclusive games selling very well in Japan.  Like I stated before, the amount of Japanese games that are only on Sony and Nintendo system in Japan is on a whole level compared to the Xbox.  I cannot see any one in Japan purchasing an Xbox for Japanese content.  If anything they would get the system for content that is not represented on the Sony or Nintendo system and it would need to be a different experience.  Another RPG where there are tons of Japanese RPGs on Sony and Nintendo system I doubt will cut it. I will take a look at the data to see how well these games actually sold in Japan.  Even so its not like the 360 was a top seller or even competitive.

In definitely very curious if MS has been anymore aggressive courting JPN content.

I think the recent JPN producer position (partner?) Is too recent for that to have any real effect.

But there's def studios they should've been pursuing partnerships with by now.

If this is true it's a massive failing on Xbox's part. Sony is out there with 3 Disney games/IP's as timed or full PS exclusives already; KOTOR Remake, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. If Xbox can't even lock down exclusivity on Indiana Jones to counter what Sony is doing, smh. Phil needs to be willing to release a few exclusives that aren't day one Gamepass if it's creating issues with potential 2nd or 3rd party exclusives, there is no reason why you can't sign a deal to bring the game to Gamepass after like 3-6 months after release instead of it being day one Gamepass if it will sweeten the deal for the 2nd or 3rd party partner and allow you to lock down full or timed exclusivity on the game. The way that Phil runs the Xbox division bugs me more and more these days.

They are great in the short term, but you have to think long game. More exclusives = more Xbox hardware sales. More Xbox hardware sales = More Xbox 2nd and 3rd party exclusives, more Japanese ports, less Sony timed hats (as they become more expensive for Sony to hat the less the marketshare ratio favors Playstation).

A handful of key 2nd and 3rd party Xbox exclusives that we have to wait 6 months to play on Gamepass this gen, can have huge benefits for Xbox in the long game, even multiple generations down the line. We have to stop thinking with an instant gratification mindset, and I say this as a Gamer on a very tight budget who loves day one Gamepass games. They are great, but Xbox can't focus only on day one Gamepass. That only day one Gamepass policy hurt them last E3 because it caused very few JP games to be on their showcase, and now it's hurting them with Indiana Jones and presumably other deals they have tried to sign behind closed doors too.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what is going on with that. Machine is among Xbox's smallest AAA devs, they have like 155 devs now and were only at like 120 when Indiana Jones itself was announced. Wolfenstein 3 was clearly planned as of 2017-2019, as it was mentioned in multiple Machine interviews over that time period. The GeForce now leak from last year listed 2 different Machine developed games meanwhile, Project Relic and Indiana Jones, each with different estimated release date (and Relic releasing first), which seems to suggest that both Indiana Jones and Wolfenstein 3 are currently in development, with Wolfenstein planned to release first. If that is the case, I see a few possibilities:

1. Indiana Jones is still pre-production with only a small team on it until Wolfenstein 3 releases later this year or early 2023, with most of their 130 devs on Wolfenstein currently
2. Wolfenstein 3 is being co-developed with another studio, perhaps id, who I believe assisted them with some of the earlier Wolfenstein games due to their small size, with the other studio doing most of the grunt work so that the majority of Machine can focus on Indiana Jones
3. Indiana Jones is being co-developed with another studio, perhaps one that has more experience with 3rd person story driven action-adventure games, considering Machine's devs have most worked on FPS games in the past, not story driven action adventure