Tri-Ace: We supported 360 because it was first out and easy to develop on

Role-playing game developer Tri-Ace discusses their reasons for supporting the Xbox 360 with timed exclusives.

Tri-Ace, alongside their publisher Square Enix, was one of the first Japanese developers to exclusively support the Xbox 360 with the release of Infinite Undiscovery.

They then brought their much loved Star Ocean series, which had seen iterations on the PS1, PS2 and PSP, exclusively to the Xbox 360 with Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope. This game's PlayStation 3 release won't be released until February 2010.

So why has Tri-Ace been exclusively supporting the Xbox 360? The studio's director on Resonance of Fate (PS3/360), Takayuki Suguro, told IGN:

"The major reason is, if you look at the current gen, or the so-called next gen - the PS3, the 360 and the Wii - the 360 was the first one to come out, and... the 360 is relatively easy to develop a game on. They're the two reasons... it came really naturally for us to develop a game on 360."

And even Suguro-san agrees that the Xbox 360 hasn't been doing too well in the East, responding to whether the console has been gaining momentum in Japan with an "Umm...not really."

However, Resonance of Fate's producer Mitsuhiro Shimano added:

"Tri-Ace developed games for 360 have been quite successful, even in the Japanese market, so I'm confident that this title will do quite well on both 360 and PS3."

That game is Resonance of Fate, an RPG that will be coming to European Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s in 2010. You can watch a trailer of the game here.

"It would be great to make a title that's successful worldwide, but that doesn't mean that we'd make a game specifically for the Western market. We believe that whatever is fun is fun throughout the world," Suguro-san concluded.