"That still doesn't explain HOW DQX came to WiiU." - Um, that's just a port, and what console was DQX first released on? That's right, the Wii, which had the weakest console hardware of the 7th gen. Also, the Wii U has the weakest hardware of the 3 consoles this gen (barely, though). Your point?

Even so, what I've said about the mainline DQ games appearing on the weakest hardware every generation is true. Maybe I should have been more specific and said that the mainline DQ entries appear on the weakest handhelds and consoles every generation. And I doubt it will appear on the PS4 considering the series' past history on weaker hardware (NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, DS, Wii, Wii U, etc.), and the fact that the series is usually low budget to begin with, which is why that franchise still makes SE money.

I would expect DQXI to be a 3DS exclusive. The mainline Dragon Quest entries have always appeared on the weakest hardware every generation. Square Enix isn't going to risk putting that cash cow through the same budget hell that Final Fantasy is going through, as it's one of the few franchises that still makes them money. Yes, the PS4 is getting Heroes, but that's a spinoff and those games mean little to nothing.

Want some recommendations from me? Pick up a PS1 and play Xenogears. That IMO is probably the closest thing to a Chrono Trigger/FFVI like RPG that you'll find on that system and also might be the last great masterpiece that Square put out before they went to crap. Trust me, you won't regret it.

Well, as for the Rare's downfall part, here's what I have to say. Let's start out with Rare's last Nintendo game, Star Fox Adventures. As for that, there are STILL people out there who think that Nintendo ruined Dinosaur Planet by throwing Star Fox onto it. The game already wasn't very good to begin with. Throwing Star Fox onto it was Nintendo's way of trying to recoup the investment. It's not like the game was rebuilt from the ground up or anything else like that.

You could see that Rare was dying long before Microsoft bought them. Perfect Dark was too much for the N64 to handle and Donkey Kong 64 was such a mess that they had to ship it with the 4 meg expansion pack because the game would randomly crash without it. Also, the Stamper Brothers, the owners of Rare, wanted out and you could see the writing on the wall.

Almost everything Rare did for Microsoft on the 360 originally began development under Nintendo and the Stamper Brothers (Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, etc.) and all of them eventually turned out to be average to mediocre in quality. The only 2 games that Rare under Microsoft officially developed themselves were Nuts and Bolts and Viva Pinata. Both those games are also considered to be mediocre at best.

It's that sudden drop in quality that's really throwing you and a lot of other gamers. How could such a legendary developer as Rare collapse into such a heap of mediocrity so fast? It's because the people who kept that quality there left. Nintendo was no longer there to fund them and give them the support they needed and the Stamper Brothers were gone.

So people blame Microsoft because they don't understand what was going on at the time. Of course Microsoft isn't blameless either. They're the ones that couldn't decide what they wanted Rare to do and eventually turned them into a Nintendo copy-cat developer. If they still stayed with Nintendo, they would have been better off then they are right now with Microsoft, of course, and would still be making sequels to their most beloved games. But they still wouldn't be anywhere near as good as they were back in the SNES and N64 days. Not by a longshot.

Remember all the effort it took Nintendo to whip Retro into shape? They were a much smaller developer than Rare was around the time Microsoft bought them in 2002. Nintendo realized that it wasn't worth rebuilding Rare from the ground up and so they decided to let them go. In the end they ripped off Microsoft to the tune of $300 million as the Rare they got out of that deal turned out to be worth FAR less than that.

You could have done that earlier when all the fanboys went out raging over Bayonetta 2's exclusivity to the Wii U. Just sayin. I mean, I would have LOL.

It did start to go heavily downhill then, but that collapse in 7th gen has it's origin in the 6th gen - however with minor symptoms. There was already a noticeable decline in the quality of Japanese 3rd party games in the 6th gen, most notably on the PS2 - Final Fantasy became bloated and cinematic with the release of FFX, sales of Tekken and Ridge Racer began to decline, Sega messed up Sonic's reputation with the release of Shadow the Hedgehog, and Konami shelved a bunch of their classic IPs or just relegated them to handhelds. The best Japanese 3rd party output that came out in the 6th gen were from niche companies used to running a tight ship (Atlus, NIS), developers with a strong vision (Hideo Kojima, Hideki Kamiya, Shinji Mikami), and collaborations with Nintendo on the GameCube and GBA (F-Zero GX, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, the Capcom Five lineup, the Baiten Kaitos games, SoulCalibur II, Star Fox: Assault, Tales of Symphonia, etc.). Don't get me wrong, there were indeed PLENTY of great games that came out in the 6th gen, but the 7th gen collapse does indeed have it's origin in the 6th gen.

It's all because of Sega and the Genesis that we have all this nonsense, as a ton of the terrible practices that now rule the games industry originated. The whole console wars BS emerged in the 4th generation because of Sega's marketing and it's been one of the most destructive forces in gaming ever since, hence all the fanboys ranting and raving about sales numbers.

"The 6th gen seems to be the last one where the gaming industry at large was actually trying to advance the medium before the bad trends such as the money hatting you mentioned became a thing in the 7th gen." - Actually, the moneyhatting trend has been a thing since well before 7th gen. It all dates back to when Sony entered the market with the PS1. But people were unwilling to accept it or believe it for a long, long time. They paid for some big-name 3rd party games, especially some bought off the N64 as well, such as Tomb Raider, Dragon Quest VII, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, etc. Speaking of FFVII, they paid a good chunk, if not all of that game's $100 million marketing budget. Also, Sony told Squaresoft to have secret meetings with prominent Japanese developers to convince them to shift their N64 projects over to the PS1. Dragon Quest VII is the really big one that they admitted to but there were others as well. Also, Sony paid hundereds of millions of dollars to make Grand Theft Auto III timed-exclusive to the PS2. When Microsoft came in, they paid Sega to make games exclusive to the Xbox like the port of Shenmue II, Jet Set Radio Future, Otogi, Panzer Dragoon Orta, etc. Sony and Microsoft have always lost a bundle on the games industry. It's only now, after years and years of terrible business practices being engrained into the 3rd parties, that 3rd parties are now losing so much money that not even Sony and Microsoft bribes can keep them afloat anymore.

What can you do when Sony has been using this "shipped means sold" practice since the PS2. They're lying about their numbers because the PS division is hurting, and the higher-ups aren't going to write them a blank check to wage a console war with Microsoft.

Also, I think they are lying about their sales numbers, since they could be using "shipped" numbers instead, OR they are combining numbers with other platforms. I REFUSE to accept their lies about the PS division doing well when they have a LONG history of shifting losses around to make the PS division look like it's doing better than what it really is. Also, it makes me wonder where Sony is making all this money from with the attach rate of the PS4 being ABYSMAL.