this list of "canon" Ys games is interesting.
I have Origin on PC, I, II, Oath, and Seven on the PSP/Vita, leaving me with no Ys V, VI, and Memories.
what a weird and random ass series. And I thought that Final Fantasy's western releases was a work of madness.
Ys, in its early days, didn't do all that great in the US (sadly). The best port of Ys I & II was on the number 3 16-bit system and required the CD add-on (TG-16 CD). Not a lot of people had those.
Ys I by itself did get a US port to the Sega Master System, but again, not a lot of people had access.
The original version of Ys III (remade, updated, and now known as Oath in Felghana) was released on all three main 16-bit systems (Genesis, SNES, TG-16), but was kind of not a great game. (the remake is awesome)
Ys IV & V never made it out of Japan. no one really wanted to do the port because Ys III didn't do that great.
Still not sure why Konami picked up Ys: Ark of Napishtim (VI), though I'm glad they did.
There is a PSP version of Ys VI, though its apparently a rather janky port. I've played the PS2 NA version, and its prefectly playable.
Most of the remakes (and the PSP versions are mostly ports of those) are due to Falcom shifting focus to PC development in the late 90s and taking advantage of PC hardware. Ys 7 was the first one in a long time specifically developed for something other than PC (PSP in this case). Falcom then seemed to bank on Vita, and went in that direction for the remake of Ys IV (Celceta).
For what its worth, Falcom is tiny, and is really good about their game budgets. It doesn't take much profit for them to be in the black. Ys Memories of Celceta did perfectly fine for them (inspite of being on Vita).
There's more to the story, but that's the cliff notes version.
