Yeah, Japan and Asian games in general are killing it right now, no doubt about that. Look at the most anticipated games for 2024 from both The Game Awards and The Golden Joysticks. The list of most anticipated nominees between the two Awards shows included 6 Asian games, with FF7 Rebirth winning the award on both. Here on VGC's own awards, Most Anticipated for 2024 had 3 JP games on the shortlist, and the category was also won by FF7 Rebirth.

Then look at the accomplishments of Asian games so far this year:

Reviews (80+)

Asian Games

• FF7 Rebirth- 93
• Tekken 8- 90
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth- 89
• Persona 3 Reload- 88
• Granblue Fantasy Relink- 81
• UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II SYS:CELES- 82
• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy- 81
• Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II- 81

Western Games

• Anomaly Agent- 84
• Lil Guardman- 84
• Momodora: Moonlit Farewell- 84 (western developed but made in a JP style and published by JP indie Publisher Playism)
• Helldivers II- 82
• Home Safety Hotline- 83
• Boxes: Lost Fragments- 82
• Islands of Insight- 81
• Ultros- 81
• Go Mecha Ball- 81
• Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden- 80

With the exception of Helldivers 2 and Banishers, the rest of the western games that reviewed well were basically indie/single A games, many of which only got a handful of reviews. Meanwhile on the Asian list, we have multiple AA and AAA hits from major publishers, and a far higher review average.

Sales/Players

Asian Games

• Palworld hits 25m players in the first month, including 15m sales on Steam and 10m players on Xbox (Xbox and PC gamepass players plus Xbox copy sales). It also becomes #2 on the Steam Peak Concurrent player charts with 2.1m peak concurrent players
• Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth sells 1m copies in the first week, a record for the franchise (about doubling it's predecessor, Yakuza 7). It also managed over 45k peak concurrent players on Steam, over 4x higher than the previous Steam record for the Yakuza franchise. 
• Persona 3 Reload sells 1m copies in the first week, a record for an Atlus game. It also achieved over 45k peak concurrent players on Steam, up from 35k on Persona 5 Royal
• Granblue Fantasy Relink becomes the 7th highest Japanese RPG on the peak concurrent Steam charts, with 114k peak concurrent players (24 hour peak is still 91k 3 weeks after release)
• Tekken 8 more than doubled Tekken 7 in peak concurrent players on Steam. Namco Bandai also suggested that sales were tracking towards hitting 2m before the end of this quarter (end of March)

Western Games

• Helldivers 2 sells 1m copies in the first 3 days, and manages 457k peak concurrent players on Steam, putting it in 20th place on that chart, and still has 444k peak in the last 24 hours, 2 weeks after launch

Flops

Western

• Suicide Squad- 60 on Opencritic. Manages just 13k peak concurrent on Steam (below Arkham Knight and Arkham Origins), down to 1k peak in the last 24 hours, 3 weeks after release. Already out of both Xbox's top 50 most played games chart (US), and TrueAchievements top 40 most played chart on Xbox (all regions). 
• Skull and Bones- 60 on Opencritic. Didn't release on Steam so no way to look at it's peak concurrent players there. Debuted at #23 on Xbox's most played games chart (US version) and #30 on TrueAchievements most played games chart (all regions), behind quite alot of comparable games, including Ubisoft's own AC Valhalla (though it is boosted by being on Gamepass) and on the TrueAchievements chart, behind the now almost 6 year old Sea of Thieves. 
• Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden- Though it reviewed well, it seems to be a review flop. It was made by the same team at Dontnod as Vampyr, but peak concurrent players are 5x lower than Vampyr. It also failed to make the top 50 most played chart on Xbox (US) and top 40 TrueAchievements (All regions).

Western devs/publishers definitely need to up their game for the remainder of 2024 and beyond.

Lmao. 

Those Final Fantasy games will come to Xbox I think. When? idk, but Square seems more open to actually being on Xbox again so I think it's a matter of time.

Those Final Fantasy games will come to Xbox I think. When? idk, but Square seems more open to actually being on Xbox again so I think it's a matter of time.

I would say 'not investing in it is a certainly lost situation' because who wins if you don't invest? They also not invest in other asian markets so you don't get games like Stellar blade/Genshin Impact etc on xbox.

You may feel that ways about games from Japan but when so many games are game of the year contenders or winners from Japan and Hi Fi Rush being one of the most well received xbox games I don't get that view...

Especially when the biggest Xbox game pass launch is Palworld with more than 10 million players on xbox alone...It is up their with games like Starfield/Halo Infinite/Forza Horizon... and possible beating atleast one of them.

I agree, I think we will get them at some point. Square President Takashi Kiryu seems way more Xbox friendly than his predecessor, Yosuke Matsuda. He seems like he wants to move the company towards being almost fully multiplatform just like Sega has done in recent years. These recent Square exclusives like Foamstars and FF7 Rebirth were pretty much all older deals signed under Matsuda's administration, deals like these often are made years in advance. It's just a matter of when those FF games come to Xbox, we don't know the exact details of the exclusivity deals Sony and Square signed. 

No he is not Xbox friendly; he is profit friendly and the fact that they are not hitting their numbers trying to be exclusive on PS is the reason for the change more than anything else.  Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a AAA game and only putting it on one platform was always going to be a bad decision, especially in this climate.