I don't think we know how well jrpgs sell this generation as of yet because most of the ones that have been released so far have been on the 360 which isn't the natural home for jrpgs and isn't that highly esteemed by most Japanese gamers.  On the right system, they can sell quite well.  Look at Dragon Quest IX's numbers on the DS for instance.

     Some of these jrpgs that have been released worldwide on 360 would have done double what they did on 360 if originally released only in Japan as PS3 exclusives.   Cases in point:  Star Ocean 3 did over a million on PS2, so one would think that it would at least double what it has done so far in Japan on 360 and Tales of Vesperia if released as a PS3 exclusive in Japan alone could have probably doubled Vesperia's worldwide total of 370,000 on the 360.

     The 360 may have a small cult audience for jrpgs, but its main audience is composed of Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, Halo, and Gears fans.  While the PS3's core audience is quite different.  They bought the console for GT5, MGS4, and FFXIII and other jrpgs while it has a niche audience for games like Killzone 2 and Resistance.

As long as microsoft keeps paying for exclusivity I anticipate most would release on the 360, the rest shared with the PS3

     Is it in Microsoft's best interest to pay for exclusivity on games that don't sell on their system?

thats why valkyria chronicles has dones so well?  Come on, if somebody was going to buy a system for JRPG's it would be the 360.  The problem with JRPG's this generation isn't that they aren't on a playstation platform, it is because they are on a home console.  The japanese market has become heavily skewed towards handhelds this gen, thus Dragon Quest's success. 

As it stands though, there isn't any kind of way to prove playstation or xbox are a better platform for JRPG's which is why the majority of people say multiplatform which is what it will most likely be.

The small one's seems to be PS3 exclusive; Atelier Rorona, Trinity Universe, Bumpy Trot 2, Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll, Last Rebelion, Tears of Tiara 2, 3D dot heroes, and End of eternity has been the last one which has been comfirmed as multiplat.

Level-5 will probably keep making PS3 exclusive's and Namco did already comfirm during the Tales of conference in April that they where going to focus more on the PS3 and less on the 360, so the answer is obvious.

Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy rpg from Sega that has sold better than any jrpg on the 360 in Japan including three games from Square and even one in a series that sold over one million units on the last console that it was on.

Also Valkyrie has sold over 510,000 units worldwide which is about the same as Square's three big 360 exclusives (it is tied with Infinite Undiscovery, only 10,000 behind Star Ocean 4, and 70,000 behind The Last Remnant) and those are exclusive jrpgs from Square while Valkyria is a strategy jrpg from Sega.  That ought to tell you something about how well jrpgs sell on 360 which is incredibly badly.

Now, if it is true that Japanese developers make jrpgs on 360 because they will sell much better then you would expect a game like Lost Odyssey the 360's biggest jrpg to have sold far more than 800,000 units since the 360 has  30,000,000 owners, however, it has not done so.  It sold quite poorly in Europe (250,000 units -- less than White Knight Chronicles in Japan), and only really sold to a niche market of fans in the US that wanted to have something to back up their claim that the 360 was King of JRPGs -- only 90,000 more than WKC in Japan).

It is apparent that if Japanese developers really want their games to appeal to a wider audience, then they need to make them for the PS3 because the PS3's biggest jrpg can sell in Japan alone almost half of what the 360's biggest jrpg can sell worldwide.  And a strategy rpg from Sega outselling three true jrpgs (and one in a traditionally very popular series) from Square is further confirmation that if Japanese developers want their games to sell, then it isn't in their best interest to make them as 360 exclusives.

 Edit: Nvm jumped the gun on that one. :/ still i agree 100% with this post.

But no really, they should have made all those game all multiplat so everyone would be able to play it AND more sales!

But i still agree with your overall post.

@txrattlesnake

lol, star ocean is not a "popular series". The best that series has gotten is 1.27 million on ps2 which has an install base of 100+ million. Ok, so let me be frank here, yes, the ps3 is a better system to sell JRPG's because their install base is like 3 times higher than the 360 in japan.

However, worldwide that is not the case. My point is that while you may sell more copies in Japan on the ps3, you would sell more copies in the west on the 360. Meaning that multiplatform would be the way to go. Make sense? Most people are telling you that they anticipate JRPG's to go multiplatform in the future for good reason.

Also, if those 3 square JRPG's had actually been good, they would have sold more. They were all pretty much garbage. Bad games don't sell well. Fact is, JRPG's just aren't the same caliber they use to be.

      The World Ends With You (and the Persona games) begs to differ and TWEWY 's creator is making a PS3 exclusive.

what are they disagreeing with?  that they aren't good?  Because none of them have gotten good sales at all.  If anything they are showing that JRPG's don't have the sales potential to do well anymore with the higher costs of development on HD systems.