I think you’re conflating AAA with AAA Japanese support. Xbox Game Studios, by the nature of some of their studios, are going to branch out beyond the dismissive “AAA” definition, but the majority of what they produce is very much so, and outside of JRPGs, every other AAA that’s not made by Sony is on Xbox - Sony’s State of Play was nearly all titles that will be on Xbox as well, as a recent example.
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I think Xbox should jump on Midgard Studio right now, Edge of Eternity has so far seemed like a decent attempt at a JRPG inspired by Final Fantasy 7, expecially for only being made by what 10-15 people? They are open to working with partners it seems to build more games and they are small and ready to grow. I would reach out about a brand new JRPG style Franchise for Xbox give them all the resources and support needed to grow and develop and I believe they could one day be something special. If that new IP succeeds I would lock them up for the next few years developing more JRPGs for Xbox or acquire them. if Xbox is going to compete with this money hatting by Sony and SE, I think building and funding their own JRPG IP’s are critical.
Also, not everything in this industry is about “a bag of money”, it’s reductive and naive to think so.
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Acquired by Nacon and game is mediocre at best.
I was specifically talking about JRPG’s. Not AAA or Japanese AAA games in general. Xbox have done a lot to bring Japanese games over like Yakuza and Phantasy Star Online. I also wasn’t talking about 1st party but 3rd party games and deals
Also naive to think every company has integrity and about relations
Not every, but nepotism is a widespread problem. And even without nepotism, you can get better deal with a person you know.
As someone who has zero interest in Final Fantasy games, I still empathize with people who were hoping to play these.
For my personal taste I am wholly indifferent.
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You said AAA support - your exact words “more Xbox’s lack of AAA support”. I was responding to the very words you said, which did not specify JRPG - or any other delineation.
Attributing words to me that I never said… my point was that if the solution was money isn’t going to be the solution to everything and there are other factors at play.
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So they can’t work with them to build a game? Also it was made by 10 - 15 people on a low budget I think they can be cut some slack. There aren’t a lot of JRPG type developers out there that don’t already have established franchises that would be easy to bring to Xbox or build a new one in partnership with Xbox. Everyone keeps saying Mistwalker or even Level - 5, but those studios are a shell of their former self and seem to be content doing the small mobile game thing now. Pickings are slim as far as JRPG studios available to partner with and or contract out to build a game. I am just trying to think of an easy way Xbox could get FF style games made for their platform and Midgard studio hasn’t announced what they are working on and their website shows they are open to working with a partner and with Microsoft level resources I could only see the games improving.
That’s fair and I like to read about suggestions, but I believe that this studio is, at this point, not worth an investment.
Studio from Japan as an example:
JP Games, new studio by Tabata, still hasn’t shown anything so that would probably be a good partnership.
Experience keep releasing games on Xbox. Strangers or the Sword City was for a long time console exclusive. They even planned to release Undernauts on Xbox only.
Rideon made solid tactical JRPGs for the Switch.
There are a lot studios from Japan, not just Level-5 and Mistwalker.
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At this point, I really don’t care for Square anymore. And sadly, Final Fantasy as well.
I did really enjoy FF15 and the last FF16 trailer finally made me interested in the game, but I’m tired of being lead around with this “Hey, maybe it’ll come to your platform! Just keep checking back!”
It would have been nice to get FF7Re on Xbox, the game looked fun, but ultimately I did have a PS4 long enough that I had the chance to play it there (or on PC) and I didn’t. And tbh, Persona 5 Royale feels like the bigger get anyway.
I hope Square isn’t surprised when Crisis Core doesn’t sell well at all on Xbox.
Edit: Oh, and obligatory screw Sony for paying to prevent a game from ever releasing on another platform.
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It’s not even the fact that Sony pays to keep massive third party games off Xbox. Timed exclusivity is and will always be a thing in this industry, and that’s okay.
The issues are:
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Sony spends lots of money on tricking the public, banking on obsfucation regarding whether a game will or will not release on another platform. SF5 was a rare case in which it was announced early on that it will be permantely exclusive, and that’s because Sony apparantly had a hand in the game relasing earlier than planned (which nobody talks about was a detriment to the game with how bad and barebones it was at launch, hence the review scores). Crash N Sane Trilogy is a perfect example of this against Xbox, and FFXVI is a perfect example of this against PC (how you announce the game for PC initially and then scrub the internet of any mention of a PC port is beyond me).
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Sony extends year long contracts behind the scenes, long after they’ve gained the intended benefits of the timed exclusivity. Extending Destiny’s DLC for an additional year so it only came to Xbox after the sequel released and the first game was dead is a huge slap in the face to Xbox gamers and further harmed the competition for little to no extra gain. Two year timed exclusivity is something Sony have pioneered and have received no pushback for whatsoever.
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As previously mentioned in a former post, the disparity between Sony and Microsoft doing these type of things is extremely lopsided. Obviously PlayStation fans/fanboys are vocal and numerous, but it’s visible from the media perspective, as well. For example, when Diablo 3 was announced, it was assumed to be a PS3 exclusive for a good while due to the Xbox version not being allowed to be mentioned by the devs and the Xbox version not initially showing up for pre-orders. It was never really questioned until Blizzard themselves eventually announced both versions are available for pre-order. Meanwhile, people were losing their shit because they thought Microsoft had a 2-day media embargo for the recent Persona ports/WoLong (which ended up, of course, being false).
Unfortunately, nobody will care about any of this until the shoe is on the other foot (the discourse around Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo and almost Starfield (phew) is a perfect example of this, if you know what I mean).
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So question, why aren’t professional gaming journalists like Jason Schreier for example asking these questions? Remember how they pressed Phil Spencer to say that ROTTR was only a one year Xbox One timed exclusive? Why can’t a few journalists ask these questions to SE? We don’t care if it’s a lifetime exclusive to PlayStation or not, we just want to know if it is because SE keeps releasing some games on Xbox so why not Final Fantasy now? That’s all, and let me say this while I type this, if it was Microsoft doing this do we seriously believe that we wouldn’t have had an answer by now? Schreier would have gone to war to get that answer by now.
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Occam’s Razer: They’re not “professional journalists”. They are something else that many accept as passing for “professional journalists”.
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I guess since they’re all we have, it sucks that most of them are just gamers with preferences but only care when it’s PlayStation getting screwed.
It’s £70 on Steam! Scrolling through other games Square Enix publishes there, none of their other titles is even close to that price. It’s like they have this idea of Final Fantasy VII specifically being some kind of enduring cultural phenomenon that stands head and shoulders above all other JRPGS. The announcement of the remake was huge, for sure, and there was an understandable amount of hype at release, but by this point, it’s just a game that came out, no bigger deal than Persona 5 or Yakuza Like a Dragon or any other fantastic JRPG. Significant enough that people want to play it, but not so singularly brilliant that it’s going to shift millions of consoles or make droves of PC gamers switch storefronts. All rather baffling, really.
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If FF7R was released day one on all platforms it would have sold better than it has. Now it’s flopping on Steam, deservedly so because no one wants to buy a full priced (hell it’s actually has the next gen tax with a ~discount~) game 2 years after it was originally released. Seeing it have less people playing than Atelier Ryza is hilarious 
Square really knows how to treat their biggest title. If the KH games come on Steam they will most definitely suffer the same fate. Such a baffling company…
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You left out buggy issue riddled title that hasn’t been patched on PC.
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Is it flopping on steam? I have no idea I don’t really use Steam
You’re right. Although I guess hardly anyone touched it on EGS either.
Peak CCU is 4,659 users. It will likely peak higher in a few days but I don’t see it getting a whole lot higher.
If you want to compare with other JRPGs you can check here https://steamdb.info/graph/?tagid=4434&sort=peak
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