This.

But I wouldn't be surprised if guys like Kitase and Nomura pulled a Matsuno in the near future. The company is being destroyed at the hands of Wada, and I don't think they'll care to stick around much longer.

And I agree with those saying that making 360 exclusives was a stupid idea. Out of the five major platforms in Japan, the 360 has BY FAR the smallest install base.

And to the people saying those exclusives weren't moneyhatted... lol. SE may be dumb, but they're not THAT dumb. They certainly had at least some compensation for those endeavors.

Summery: Butthurt fanboys pissed at SE for putting their games on the 360.

 this is why many believe that moneyhats were involved. Not saying that thats a good or bad thing...it's just the thing.

Maybe the money M$ gave them far surpassed whatever profits they could make from a ps3 version. That and the fact that they're trying to westernize themselves as that's "where it's at" nowadays.

I actually kind of think the Eidos acquisition was a good long-term investment. It sets up a global infrastructure with commercially successful, world-renowned IP’s in western markets, which is crucial with dwindling console sales in Japan.

A vast majority of the Eidos catalogue is Action games. With the growing emergence of real-time battle systems in Square’s RPGs, the line is somewhat blurred now in what separates and defines the two genres. I think they believe they can compliment each other by incorporating the best of both worlds. There’s no real common ground with FPS games offered by Free Radical, so I don't really see that being a better move.

A lot of people in this thread fail to realize the difference between a userbase and a target market. JRPG fans are a target market and the size of a userbase on a console does not determine the size of the target market within that userbase. PS3 may have a smaller userbase overall but make no bones about it it has a larger JRPG target market than the 360 and it would have an even more concentrated JRPG market if it was not for SE dumb decision to put average JRPG's on the 360.

I understand that SE wants to penetrate the western markets but that wont happen when you put out games exclusive for the 360 that aren't really good enough to lure new people into the genre. Infact they might even reinforce people's decisions not to play JRPG's. Star Ocean and others SE RPG's should have been PS3 exclusive and then FFXIII should have been the game to introduce to the 360 userbase to get new western gamers into the genre much like final fantasy VII did on the PS1.

They went about it all wrong in forcing japanese to buy the 360 for certain jrpg's while not being able to sell the game to other japanese who didn't buy a 360. Or even other JRPG fans around the world that previously weren't planning on buying a 360 or refuse/can't afford to buy a 360 on top of the PS3.

I don't mean to personalize the sentiment as the previous statements were looking at the situation from a business perspective but Star Ocean 4 and other SE games that are only on the 360 are games that I might have been able to be convinced to buy if they were good. But because they are not on the PS3 I wont even be able to look at them since I don't plan on buying a 360.

To the people saying that Pokemon is the best selling RPG, you got to realize that there are a lot people that don't view Pokemon as an RPG like they do other RPG's.

I'm the same way, when i say RPG I mean games like Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate. (PC)

Well, what about the money that Sony must be paying SE? Afterall, PS3 sales in Japan are pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. And elsewhere, there is no reason FFv13 should be exclusive since there is an almost 10 million unit deficit between the 360 and PS3. And that's not even bringing the Wii into the discussion. There is an ongoing thread in 2ch gaming that I think expresses the situation fairly well. It translates roughly to "SE to Sony: "Hurry up and sell some fucking consoles already!", the implication being that SE has refused to release their big games on the PS3 due to the failure by Sony to sell the system.

Why is there a belief that a PS3 version is a given when it's not even in a good enough position to KEEP exclusives? And again, that's an argument against the PS3 and for the 360/mulitplatform. The Wii makes the argument even uglier.

Thing's started to go wrong for Square Enix after they switched from Nintendo to Sony. Bad Decision.

LOL if the ps3 sales in japan is pathetic then I don't even know what to call the 360 sales there.