Tempest was said to be the worst game, not sure about why Innocence didn't make it, and Hearts... don't they have a problem with localizing 2D Tales games?
It's funny that Hearts was trademarked in NA I think not too long ago, what if they're doing an eShop-localization? *sniff*
It's just pretty obvious that Namco has made many localization decisions based on Japanese sales, not Western sales, and the two have nothing in common. I mean, apart from Abyss GC -- which, as I said, I think would have done well, but they never made because Symphonia sold more on the PS2 than GC in Japan, so they ignored its good GC sales in the US -- there's also that decision to localize Tales of the World, but not either of the good DS Tales games. And no, I don't think timing is the reason. They didn't need to release them right away, plenty of games get localized a year or two after their original release. I expect the reason is Japanese sales, which shouldn't be the primary reasoning for localizing a game here, I think. DS Tales would certainly have sold more than 40,000.
I know Symphonia 2 didn't sell nearly as well as the first game, but still, given the lower review scores, and in comparison to everything else, it did alright, I think.
(Oh, is there anything about how Graces F or Abyss 3DS have done? I don't remember.)
I'm not sure thats the best way to look at the Tales series's sales potential. Almost all of the Tales games so far have sold roughly the same in the US despite differences in platform, timing of release and competition. The Tales series seems to have a small yet very dedicated fanbase that will give the series a minimum sales threshold. However the series doesn't sell well beyond those rough 60-80ks, at least not without a bigger marketing push.
And it really does just come down to marketing. A good example is Phantasia GBA, a crappy port that came out after the DS launch and when NoA was trying to actively kill the GBA.
That's not really true, the game released early in 2006, and while Nintendo was reducing GBA support that year for sure, versus previous years, and pushing the DS, they were still supporting the GBA. They released a few games that year, including Drill Dozer, Phantasia GBA, FFV Advance, and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red. Of course they did pass on some others, most notably the bit generations series and Mother 3, and then at the end of the year NCL forced NOA to kill off the GBA so the only first party release in '07 was FFVI Advance, but still, when Phantasia GBA released, NoA was still supporting both systems.
Yet its one of the better selling Tales of titles out there. Why? Because Nintendo published it and gave it both a marketing push and a push onto retail space. The same could be said of Vesperia and Symphonia 2, both of which were released under near perfect conditions and got substantial marketing for the series. Thus they managed to sell 2x the regular Tales sales threshold. But I'm not sure if that marketing push was profitable back then.
I agree with this though, the main reasons Phantasia GBA did sell somewhat decently, despite the poor quality of the port, is because Nintendo did push it, and published it themselves. I think they might have been expecting it to sell more (it did sell far less than Symphonia, for sure), but compared to the rest of that list it doesn't look so bad...