Yes, I would call GTA an exception. I can't think of any other franchise where doing it like this would work out as well as for GTA.
Dark Souls 1 wasn't exactly a full price release iirc. It had a 40 retail edition that included the game, an artbook, soundtrack, making-of, a poster and some post-cards. That's basically a collectors edition sold below normal edition full-price. And it was only brought over because of a petition in the first place, so it's a bit of a special case.
I can't speak for Rise of the Tomb Rider.
I'd say it's not impossible to sell a late port at full price (and of course it also depends on how late it is), but for how many games does this work out? 1 in a hundred?
That's a good point.
My thinking here is along the lines of 'a hyped game comes out on consoles, it turns out it's actually mediocre-to-bad, it releases later on PC and no one cares about it anymore even though it might have gotten a sizeable number of day-one PC sales due to marketing hype'. (*cough* FF XIII *cough*)
But maybe I overestimate this point. But even then, a late port has another problem: visibility. There's a ridiculous amount on games on Steam and more are coming out every day.
Just dropping a port without much fanfare doesn't really work anymore for the vast majority of games.
Just to make this clear: I'm not arguing that late ports aren't profitable at all, that's clearly wrong. I just think it would be much more profitable with day-and-date releases, and more japanese publisher seem to think the same way, like Namco or NISA.
