MS had to pull enough strings as it was to get the game on the 360 outside of Japan. They probably felt the Japanese market was not worth the extra fight, especially considering how few consoles are in the country. Regardless, it is SE's loss and not MS's. The only benefactor is Sony, and they wont benefit much.

It certainly wouldn't have done it...under today's circumstances. But had it stayed exclusive, along with other games, PS3 sales would be up. Now, everytime something is even hinted at being PS3 exclusive, there's billions of rumors that it'll come to the 360.

But even still, under today's circumstances, MGS4 is on track to outsell MGS3 (whose userbase was over 100 million). Or is it some sort of weird anamoly that it sold as well as it did on the "userbase that isn't large enough to generate a profit and thus the game should have gone multiplatform"?

Could they sell another 150K units in Japan if they made it cross-platform? Maybe, maybe not. But even 150K units is barely even significant when you're dealing with the scales on which FF games sell: only about a 3% increase. Can the costs of back-localizing the 360 port for Japan truly justify an increase of only 3%? I doubt it.

Any FF fans in Japan will buy a PS3 if they don't have one already when FFXIII comes out. I'm ready to bet that half the 360 owners in Japan probably have a PS3 as well...That's why SE doesn't see the need to make a 360 JPY version of FFXIII. Now I wouldn't be surprised if FFXIV is multiplatform worldwide, since they can start the development on the 360 along with the development on the PS3 right at the start.

Since MGS has always been on the Playstation, I'm not too surprised by that.  The MGS fans have always owned Playstations and it is no different this gen.  I would guess that it is one of the few examples where this has happened.

For most games though, you want to have the opportunity sell your game to as many people as possible.  Since there are quite a few people with only one console, multiplat is usually the best option.

As for FFXIII in Japan, it's questionable if the 360 has the necessary install base to warrant a port.

As for your first point, a publisher should not be making decisions on what is best for the PS3.  They cannot count on future exclusives to help them out either.  It makes no sense to think like that.  A publisher must make decisions on what is best for their game at that moment in time.

I said multiplatform is a better option.  I agree with you.

BMaker11 said that exclusivity was just as good as muliplatform.  I disagree with him.

TLR and IU didn't sell very well because they were rushed to release.  Is it a coincidence that both of those games, especially TLR suffer from nearly game breaking technical issues?  No.  Also, S-E hyped up those two games in Japan but forgot to hype them in the West.  It's lazy marketing like this that makes people assume JRPGs are dead.  The sales figures for them declined in the last few years but they are far from dead.

Are you serious? SquareEnix marketed that crap out of both games. There were commercials running on Spike, CBS, ESPN, Adultswim (cartoon network) and G4tv. Compared to the amount of airtime Resistance2 and MGS4 got, you might aswell give the SquareEnix Market team a raise. I can only speak for North America.

I think it might have something to do with the review scores they both got.  I say the commercial for IU but not for TLR.  I didn't even know there was a commercial for that game.

I don't know, either Sony payed Square, or Sony and Square know something I don't.