The point is that BS was localized rather quickly compared to BD. So it is pretty clear to me they realized the importance of localization by that time and what do you think happened that made SE allow Nintendo to localize the game? The new CEO was definitely more lenient in letting Nintendo localize it hence DQVII, VIII were localized as well.
BD sold 1m units worldwide - it sold extremely well in Western markets, and got a good reputation as well, which of course propelled the localization. We're still talking about a 10+ months delay from the Japanese release to the European one, though (April 2015 - February / March 2016). Causality of SQEX involvement on a faster localization cannot be adequately assessed because of plenty of confounding reasons.
Oh please, stop bringing in the E3 presentation stuff. It is hilarious how you keep going back to E3 which in reality was the announcement of their Tokyo RPG Factory studio instead of Setsuna. They even sent a press release the same day and it was related to their studio, not Setsuna. So seriously, stop bringing the E3 point again and again, it is only going nowhere.
During the E3 conference, SQEX announced the creation of a new development team, and its new project - this signals even more SQEX intention of having high expectations about the output of such team - otherwise, why even bother announcing its existence during the event? I have never seen SQEX promoting one of his teams during a press conference aimed at a worldwide audience. People were comparing Setsuna to Child of Light - but Child of Light was announcing during Digital Days, a conference focused on small projects. The mere fact that Setsuna was announced along its development team during the biggest conference of the year says it all - do you really see SQEX focusing on announcing a sub-100k game (sub-250k worldwide, going by your expectations) during E3? I don't.
Considering they did zero work on Star Ocean 2 (1:1 port of PSP version), and stealthily released it for download, I doubt they had any big expecatations.
Dude, come on. You keep saying this like you know the future. They are betting on creating games hoping that they sell well with each iteration and judging from the comments made by Matsuda, the third entry in the series will be the one that will determine the fate of the series, if there is no growth by then. Project Setsuna is just one of the game and since it is a new IP and a low-cost project, it is clear they don't have much expectations either.
There's a thin line between "low expectations" and "utter failure". I can totally expect a sub-100k game across two platforms from Gust or Nippon Ichi (which, by the way, sometimes canned IPs based on those sales), not from SQEX, which created a development team solely with the purpose of creating old-school jRPGs on the platform(s) where the company itself think jRPG gamers will be in the future.
So you basically agreed that the demo helped in selling more copies for Bravely Default. Case closed.
The point wasn't related to how the demo sold the game - we cannot establish a causation in this case (or, if you could, please let us know). the point was that SQEX marketing push for BD was minimal, and there were people from Japan telling us that, and also people discussing how all the marketing was left to the development team. The announcement of Setsuna during E3 already tells you how SQEX shifted the marketing push from the development team - if the push has been slowed down after the announcement, then it's another matter. I saw Famitsu previews for the game, so there's that. And again, I'm not expecting BD numbers (marketing push seems smaller) but expectations should be around that.
Dragon Quest series is not turn-based JRPG? 3DS had no turn-based games in 2012?
The only turn-based DQ game 3DS got before BD was Terry's Wonderland, which is a monster-collecting game aimed at a young audience. In terms of old-school jRPGs, the only game 3DS got before BD were Soul Hackers, Tales of the Abyss porting and Medabots 7 - not really games that build an audience reactive to new IPs.
