Am I missing something here? 50K of sales in Japan with little prospect of making it to 60K doesn't exactly seem like a great launching pad for a western release. Clearly they need western sales to make the game a decent earner, but how often does a J(K)RPG with mediocre sales in Japan perform better than mediocre in the west?

On the strength (or rather weakness) of Magna Carta II sales I'd say the cost of a PS3 port may not be worth it. Seems the other JRPG timed exclusives all performed well enough to assure the publishers/developers of a profitable PS3 port. I'm not so sure they can be as confident about a MG II port.

I think its important to note that that even though 50,000 is even worse then mediocre by Western and Japanese definition, development in Korea is considerably cheaper than in Japan. When the developers of Ridge Racer said they needed sales of 500,000 to break even, that may have applied only to Japan since even one of their new games was nearly 90 USD. It is because of that Japanese publishers even turn to Western developers as a cheaper alternative then there studios back home (silent hill, dead rising 2).

So with a Western release Softmax might be able to break even at least for Magna Carta. (they didn't even make their own game engine but licensed Epic's Unreal 3, further cutting down costs)

The Last Remnant also used Unreal 3.0 and they canned the PS3 port. It also sold a good bit more in Japan than Magna Carta II. If Namco isn't going to recoup the money back from the investment necessary to make a PS3 port (porting to PS3 isn't exactly cheap), it'll stay on 360. Either way, what's the point of waiting so long for a port that might not even come if you already have a 360? Potentially every third-party exclusive could get ported (Look at Bioshock, Oblivion and Lost Planet and the GTA and MGS series last gen). Does that mean you should stop buying third-party games advertised as exclusive on release to stay on the safe side? That's just ridiculous.

If it means the port will be better for PS3 with more add-ons, more playable characters, more areas and all that sort of thing, then yes, the most recent offencer is SO4, and im slightly pissed i bought it for my 360 because i was 100% sure at the time it was gonna stay 360 exclusive for a much longer time... not even the end of the year and already a PS3 version is announced!! thats rather... evil...

Skepticism...not...holding well.....


I guess I'll rent this first just to see how this is. I was disappointed Magnacarta on PS2.

But not every third-party game advertised as exclusive is going to get ported. Are you going to avoid XIII Versus too because it's possible there would be a 360 port? (Square-Enix aren't above doing that. They love money too much. National ties means nothing to Square-Enix. They are a multi-national corporation. They are above nationalities.) There is no guarantee that Magna Carta II will see a PS3 port. The Last Remnant was supposed to go to PS3 and that port was cancelled. If you were to simply avoid every third-party game advertised as exclusive, you'd be stuck with just playing first-parties and multiplats and you'd miss out on the third-party exclusives that stay exclusive. On the flip side though, if you do decide to wait it out and MC2 stays exclusive, you can get your hands on this game for a cheap price. So it's up to you. Just keep in mind that ToV was out since Aug 2008 in NA and there's still no PS3 NA announcement (Namco pulled this kind of stunt with ToS. No english PS2 port). So be prepared to wait it out a long, long time (all for the POSSIBILITY that there may be a port. No guarantees).

And with that, in conclusion this is the beauty of owning both HD consoles, you can chose carfully with out much backlash.