Xbox had multiple Mistwalker exclusives, but the platform is so dire in Japan that they just miss out on a major market. There was a whole ton of attempted Atlus and From support in the 00s and early 10s, and it all failed.
https://www.amazon.com/Games-Atlus-Xbox-360/s?rh=n:4924903011,p_89:Atlus They tried! They really tried! And it sure seems like every single fucking game flopped and they had no real incentive to go for it on Xbox One.
I don't really know what this is supposed to be responding to. I mentioned already that Microsoft attempted to invest in JRPGs on the 360 and that it ended in failure and them moving away from the genre. If Microsoft wanted a thriving JRPG audience on their platform then it is up to them to invest in the genre by whatever means they find acceptable, be it first party development or third party partnership/investment. I can't blame Microsoft for not doubling down on the failures they experienced with the 360, but doing nothing about the situation will not improve things as third parties have no reason to assume the risk of building an audience on a new platform entirely by themselves. Microsoft has a huge hill to climb on making their platform appealing to JRPG developers. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I thought they didn't. Thanks for agreeing with me?
The argument that exclusives are the reason why platforms have flourished as well as they have for JRPGs is IMO just a really bad argument. The main driver appears to just be "which platforms are popular in Japan?", and that has mostly just been handhelds + Sony, with Sony in rapid decline in Japan since the PS2 mostly tracking with the overall shift to handhelds.
This seems completely backwards. Consumers buy hardware to play the software available on them. No platform is inherently popular in a region, the software present on that platform is popular and drives uptake of the platform hardware. Xbox is not popular in Japan because its unique software offerings are not popular in Japan.
Exclusives are the differentiating factor between platforms and the drivers behind choosing one over the other. If I am a consumer who likes both Game A and Game B and I have a choice between System 1 (which has A + B) and System 2 (which has only B) then I am going to buy System 1 every time. It has both of the games I want to play. Game A being exclusive to System 1 has determined my purchase. The idea that an exclusive makes no difference and that I would choose to buy System 2 instead and get
less of what I want is an absurd one.
Note that I made no mention of the terms of exclusivity in my example because...
IMO, I think it is really lazy to conflate the three types of exclusives into a single category, because they are absolutely wildly different business arrangements and business incentives. Incidental exclusivity (the Atlus way usually, with no deal but no interest in a short term port), Marketing Deals (the Sony way), and Publishing deals (the Nintendo way) are all hugely different, and none of those (with regards to recent JRPGs) are full locks-- they are just temporary windows for some incentive.
I am approaching this from a consumer standpoint. A platform holder can do whatever they wish to make their platform more attractive to developers, but I only care about how attractive it is to me, the consumer.
From a consumer standpoint, the stipulations behind why a particular piece of software is exclusive to a given platform is largely meaningless. I as a consumer have decided I desperately want to play Final Fantasy XVI and the only platform that will satisfy my desire is the Playstation 5. Whether this arrangement has occurred because Sony struck a marketing deal, a publishing deal, assisted with development, or just because SE felt like putting it on this one platform for no particular reason at all does not change the end result: if I wish to play Final Fantasy XVI as early as possible then I must purchase a Playstation 5 in order to do so. I am entered into the PS5 ecosystem and Sony reaps the benefits (and their competitors lose out) regardless.
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I am not really sure where the general discussion is even going at this point. It seems clear that Xbox is lacking a significant audience for JRPGs and that is why SE and some other publishers are having some titles skip the platform. I have outlined my own reasoning for why this audience is missing and that is because Xbox is bereft of any exclusive content that would attract the JRPG audience to their system over any of their competitors. Missing out on genre-defining software will cause fans of that genre to go elsewhere and wither the audience for that genre on your platform. This will create a compounding effect where non-genre-defining software will skip your platform of their own accord as there will be an insufficient consumer base to sell to.
This works on both sides. Securing exclusivity of a key piece of software for your platform builds an audience for that genre and that already built audience inherently incentivizes producers of similar software to sell to that audience. For example, Falcom will produce a new Trails RPG on Playstation to attempt to sell to a portion of the audience who already owns the system to play Final Fantasy without any direct incentive from Sony. Sony incentivizing the genre king to become exclusive indirectly incentivizes all the other producers to follow suit.
The flip side is what has happened and is happening to Xbox. Xbox does not get nearly as many JRPGs as its direct competitor and the JRPGs it does get are often from less popular franchises. Consumers interested in playing JRPGs skip the platform in order to purchase the one with the wider and more popular selection. The JRPG audience on Xbox is therefore small, consisting primarily of people who are more involved in non-JRPG genres with a passing interest in JRPGs on the side. (so for example, someone bought an Xbox to play Halo Infinite and then decided to pick up Tales of Arise once they were already bought in, they did not care enough about Tales to buy a system solely to play the game) Since the consumer base who buys JRPGs is small, developers are not incentivized to release games in the genre of their own accord.
Reversal of the situation would require Microsoft coming up with ways to incentivize both developers to produce content in the genre on their platform, but also to incentivize consumers to prioritize their platform over their competitiors' in regards to the genre. Having a game release on your system and then sell 5% of the overall platform split does not incentivize future investment by third parties and does not grow your consumer base.
If Microsoft wants to receive support like the other platforms do, they need to build an audience like the other platforms did. Sony has an audience built up over more than two decades now. Nintendo carved a niche out for themselves by building up an audience and publisher relations through their handheld line, not to mention their own first party development. Microsoft has done little to nothing to invest in this segment since the 360 era. Receiving multiple years old ports of popular games or being merely included in the release of small titles will not build an audience that developers will want to cater to without outside influence. Microsoft has a great big hill to climb and I don't know if they're willing to climb it. Perhaps they are hoping that if they grow their install base in other ways they'll pick up some success with Japanese developers along the way without focusing on them. That could be the case, but its easier said than done.
