Its things like the GTA4 episodes, lots of people say microsoft paid for them to be exclusive, when in actual fact they paied an advanced fee, just like any other publisher would when commissioning content. Alot of RPGs have come out first on 360 this generation, and that is mail due to microsoft money, but think of it this way. games are really expensive to make and you have to get that money from somewhere. Microsoft need to increase there market share in japan, and paying game developers to make games that japan will want is one good way, they aer a publisher, its what publishers do!

another way for a company to make a game is to self fun it without publisher money, and even for large independent developers like squenix and id software (they just announced EA will publish Rage. They have the funds o completely develop a game, but publishing is outside of that. marketing and all the stuff publishes are good at is expensive. Because they took the entire risk and cost of development on by themselves, they get a better publishing contact. if they needed advanced money from EA to develop the game with, the would have got a worse return), theres only so much money to go round. I have no doubt the square can fun a few games buy itself, but extra dollars from an interested publish that just wants good market expanding games with little to no influence on day to day operation is a good match. Thats one thing microsoft are good at, they came to the game console party late, and they know that. its been a hard fight to get to where they are today, and i think one of there strengths is how they handle there game studios. Companies like rare and lionhead are completely autonomous, they can run themselves how the want, in the full knowledge that they have the financial backing of the biggest software company in the world. they can build there games and not worry about how they pay there staff(i don’t know what lionheads business statement is, but rare’s charter is to create games that expand the xboxs user base, hence games like viva pinyata).

I’m completely loosing the point and rambling here, but my basic point the games business aint what it was, and money however you get it (publisher advances or tryng to target as many people as possible) is absolutely necessary if our going to get anywhere.

These are games which sell primarily in Japan, and there are few RPGs or RPG gamers on the Xbox in Japan. It makes no commercial sense for them to do that unless there is something in it for them, surely?

yeah, in the passed they have paied for some exclusives, they have bough game devlopment studios and all that, but so has sony and nintendo.

and anyways, didnt squenix basicly say at there press confrence that they deciede to do the 360 verion to maximise the target market in the US and europe? thats what i understood from it anyways.

http://kotaku.com/5025115/is-final-fantasy-xiii-xbox-360-coming-to-japan-ask-them