Im just wondering what peoples thoughts on the relationship between these two companies is. The 360 now has 4 console exclusives in Eternal Sonata, Beautiful Katamari, Ace Combat 6 and Warhammer.  Are these games the result of four seperate instances of isolated negotiations, or are they indicative of a wider growing relationship between Namco and Microsoft?

According to wiki idolmaster in japan, Zegapain and culcept saga are also exclusives. A few old PS exclusives are now also multiplat like soul caliber

Culdecept was on PS2, I wonder why they aren't making a PS3 version, or for that matter, it being a non graphics intensive game, a Wii version? (Note: A surprisingly fun board/card game)

Lol, if it werent for soul calibur and ps3 exclusive Tekken 6 (undoubtedly huge), i'd almost call namco and 2nd party microsoft developer (exaggeration yes but you see my point)

Well, I can't say there is really much evidence, but my guess would be their relationship goes like this:

Microsoft: Hey, you're one of the Japanese Big 4 developers (these are Nintendo, Sega, Namco-Bandai, and Konami in that order in case you didn't know), and we can't get the Japanese to buy our system, so we'll pay you lots of money to make games that appeal to them.

Namco-Bandai: K thanks.

I'm pretty sure that's all there is to it.

Something that most companies that have ever found themself in direct competition with Microsoft can tell you is that Microsoft usually does not produce a very high quality product and it takes them a long time to understand the desires of the market but Microsoft's strenght comes from their ability to negotiate business relationships and their vast financial resources.

I don't think that is is plausable that anyone would truely know the nature of the relationship between Microsoft and Namco-Bandai but I'm certain Microsoft has done everything in their power to gain as much support from Namco Bandai as possible.

You should probably check out the 13 announced Wii games too... I'd say the fact that all Namco's 360 titles are targeted at the Japanese market (on a system guaranteed to not sell more than 300K copies of those games in Japan) is pretty strong evidence that these titles are being paid for by Microsoft.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing; it's how Microsoft and Sony have operated for years, but you probably should read too much into it as a relationship past that of a financial one.

 Yup.  Exactly.  I don't blame Namco-Bandai.  I miss a lot of their games (I think Ace Combat 6 is supposed to be a timed exclusive, as is Eternal Sonata, M$ has just payed them to keep a lid on it), but they sold off Monolith who made the Xenosaga series so I am less upset about it.

 Culdcept Saga as well as most of the others you listed are definite exclusives, barring later changes.  Soul Calibur 2 was on all the systems (PS2, GC, Xbox), so that is not unprecedented.  

@naznatips

Yeah i completely forgot about the wii. Its like its just in a league of its own. And i dont mean the casual league, i mean a league far above the 360 and PS3, wii owners are looking down on us from some sort of gamer heaven giggling and wondering how we all got it so wrong

Gamer heaven? At least 2 of those 13 titles are minigames, 1 may have been cancelled (Space Station Tycoon), another is a horse racing game, one is a namco museum compilation, a few of the others are anime games that we have no idea of the quality on, one is a spinoff in which the PS3 and 360 are getting the main installment (although the spinoff does look interesting). I'd sooner get 3-4 games of good quality than a dozen in which only a few may turn out decent.  I'm sure the majority of 360 and PS3 owners wouldn't be interested in most of those titles anyways.