Question. When do we expect that Dragon Quest XI greenlighted, and what was the perception of the systems at the time?
For the 3DS and 4DS it doesn't really matter too much. Nor for the Vita, since Dragon Quest benefits from a big userbase and the Vita was never poised to dethrone the DS line. But the Wii U and PS4 have both done surprisingly poorly, so I could imagine that a game could start development on either based on overly optimistic predictions.
Of course, I'm assuming that the game isn't likely to have switched platforms. Maybe that's wrong. Moving to a multiplatform approach may make sense if the original platform no longer appears to be as viable.
I think we're still early enough that they can add or drop platforms. Two years is the development cycle of a normal game, and polishing up graphics for a cross-gen game is something we saw a lot of titles in the West (see Destiny, Thief, or The Evil Within) do fairly late in the process.
Since Square Enix is a large publisher, if they decide they want to add a platform or cut costs on a platform, I think they have the resources and sense of security to do either.
But yes I agree that part of this whole puzzle is Square Enix looking at where the market is today and predicting what will happen by the time the game comes out. That's still a fair amount of prognostication even if it's less hard than trying to pick platforms in August 2012.
Usually there's some level of reduced friction from a technological standpoint when working on platforms from the same vendor, but Square Enix is large enough that I don't think that would be an issue for them whereas it certainly can be for a team of 15-30 people making a handheld game.
Overall Dragon Quest is a bit harder to predict for me simply because it's a large scale one region game, and we also don't know who exactly is developing it. Like figuring out Square Enix's business strategy for global products tends to be pretty straightforward, as does products that are small scale one region games, since at that point there's no reason to not include PS4/XB1 for the former or just sit on 3DS for the latter. Here though, there's in theory potential to hit other audiences, but no guarantee.
The developer I view as relevant because, if it's Level 5 for example, they now have a tech stack that spans basically every platform except 3DS for Wonder Flick, and can presumably go add that for a Dragon Quest title. Having that already be there makes it more appealing to consider ports than investing extra capital building out the capability.
