opinion:
I just thought about it recently. Mistwalker, the company featuring basically the A-team from Square Enix and Final Fantasy games have solely made exclusives games for a particular console or device and never have ported that game.
They first began with the Xbox 360, developing Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Next they went to Nintendo DS with a few games including some Blue Dragon spin-offs, now their latest big release ‘The Last Story’ was released for the Nintendo Wii – while currently their making some games for iOS.
It seems from that history that Mistwalker want to share their games with everyone, but with only one particular title at a time – why is the question. I can think of a couple of reasons but nothing to say their concrete.
Mistwalker have stated and are known to be heavily focused on delivering high quality games featuring beautiful graphics, a well-driven story and excellent music (courtesy of Legendary composer – Nobou Uematsu) – so if their focusing on just one console or device, there is no interruption of quality to provide for multiple ones. Because it’s been publicly known that say for example, developing games for the PS3 is very different than the Xbox 360. I believe that is the Mistwalker way, to provide the utmost quality and experience for the chosen platform they want to release their next game on.
Another reason is to do with what I just said about the Playstation 3 – being difficult to develop for, along with time consumption. It’s interesting that the PS3 is the only console Mistwalker have yet to makes games on, why? A decent proposal is the fact it’s hard to create quality made games yet evidence shows that the Uncharted series disregards that question, so why? Perhaps it does take a lot more time to develop on and while Naughty Dog exclusively develop games for Playstation 3, and have the financial backing, perhaps Mistwalker doesn’t – and their not prepared to spend time and money.
Lost Odyssey
Perhaps deals are made from companies from Microsoft and Nintendo to makes exclusive games for their system. Offers made and money sent to Mistwalker’s way to develop high quality J-RPG’s for their platform. No doubt that works for Microsoft, who are absolutely struggling for J-RPGs – and basically aren’t known as a RPG console. Same for Nintendo, in fact they’re worse for their console with very little, however their Nintendo DS is better with a plentiful amount. The Playstation 3 has absolutely no problem with a lack of RPG’s, but I’m sure Sony still would love Mistwalker to contribute to their library.
The other reason I can think is financial. Obviously it would could more money putting the game on another device, creating game discs and all and just analysing how many copies it will sell for that platform. Companies ALWAYS analyze and predict the amount of sales it would want or hope it will sell, and if doesn’t work out well then it’s a loss for them. Providing a sole platform is a safer option, although depending on the popularity of that device, and the game their making, it could work either way.
I’m baffled for one to see why the Blue Dragon expansions we’re released on Nintendo DS when the original game came out on Xbox 360. Also I’m very interested in playing The Last Story but since it’s a Wii exclusive, and I don’t have a Wii (or want one) I can’t play it. Why not port it for Xbox?
Of course we are talking here about everywhere but inside Japan – where we think just about every game made there for everything is a JRPG. When we’re talking JRPG’s for English audiences it’s a different story.
Who knows exactly the decision process that goes on, but no doubt there are and it’s for the best.
