Sage00 said:
But to act like there wouldn't be advantages in doing so is ridiculous.
No, it's not, because there
are no real advantages. The cost/benefit picture for a port is that you spend additional development money to create the second version (as well as experience a lot of difficult-to-quantify "drag" costs in terms of having to manage multiple SKUs, correctly predict performance of each such SKU, deal with multiple platform-holders and lotcheck processes, etc.) in exchange for expanding the market: some people who don't own platform one will now become potential customers and buy the game on platform two.
In this particular case, all those porting cos are there, but with no benefit o them. There is not, meaningfully speaking, any serious market of PS3 owners in Japan who do not have access to a Wii and would not choose to buy one to play Dragon Quest. No new markets are opened up by such a move; no excluded customers are brought into the fold. That's why the whole idea is so silly: DQ is going to sell 3-million-something copies on Wii, and a port to PS3 might
relocate a portion of those sales but would be very unlikely to significantly expand them, especially to the level needed to counteract the costs of going multiplatform.
That's not to say there are no possible platform strategies for DQX that ould have been better than the current one. They could've developed it for DS from the start, maybe gotten it out faster, and potentially sold another 4m. They could've held off and waited until next generation in the hopes that a better "clear winner" emerged. But given the (not unreasonable) decision to make the game for Wii in the first place, there's also no reason for them to shift their strategy now.
