Continuing from the last thread:
They also announced Chikyū Kaimetsuteki B-kyū Kanojo for mobile phones... Has this game disappeared as well?
If that's what 地球壊滅的Ｂ級カノジョＺ 宇宙大戦 is ( seemingly
http://www.level5.co.jp/products/b-kano/ ), then it released and was taken down.
1) to be honest, L5 Vision 2015 just showed a general increase in output, not a different ration 3DS / mobile with respect to L5 Vision 2013; back then, we had announced Wonderflick and the two other mobile games, along with Layton 7 on 3DS / mobile and Inazuma Eleven Go 3 for 3DS and IE Online for browsers. Actually, this L5 Vision had much more on 3DS than the previous one. It seems clear that L5 has been trying to move towards mobile since many years ago, but since then it has yet to succeed. L5 Vision 2013 was quite clear in stating Hino's strategy, but all those mobile efforts bombed, while the success was found on 3DS. L5 wants to refocus in the mobile industry, but everything showed how actually it is not able to do so, but can succeed to a great extent on traditional platforms (Ni no Kuni also sold notably well worldwide)
2) The fact is, FL2 might be more riskier on mobile than on 3DS, given past history of the company. L5 already attached one of its popular IPs on a mobile game, and I don't think it went well; perhaps this time it might go better but when the company already showed to be strong on 3DS (and now they could have also advertised the game in light of YW) this seems a big risk to take. Of course the game looks so cheap that development costs will be lower than developing a full-fledged sequel.
I was probably insufficiently clear here. What I mean was that with Level 5 Vision 2013 and Level 5 Vision 2015, they showed a clear switch to viewing mobile as a critical part of their corporate vision instead of a side effort like it was in 2012 and before.
They had that JAVA/Brew platform with things like the hostess game and the feature phone version of Ni no Kuni before, but these days their message seems to be that the two platforms they really pay attention to are 3DS and mobile.
Mobile hasn't worked out for them yet, but that seems to have no real discouraging impact on their output, since mobile itself is a proven market. As you said, there's actually more mobile games now than before via the increase in output.
This isn't super uncommon though. Most of the mobile titans of today actually failed for quite a long time before finding a hit, since mobile is cheap enough to invest in that if you can wade through 20 failure and then finally get a major hit, it actually still works out very, very well in your favor. It's a scenario that hasn't existed in the games industry in quite some time. An extreme example is that DeNA has 114 iOS apps, but that one that makes the significant majority of their smartphone revenue is Final Fantasy Record Keeper, and they're a company that noted native apps (modern smartphone games) as a big part of their strong quarterly profit.
But yes, outside of a few companies that really seem to have a strong grasp on the market (I'd submit COLOPL, Supercell, and King as companies able to continually repeat success with a very strong hit rate without being a platform vendor), it's certainly harder to project success than in the dedicated market.
For a traditional publisher who is a risk averse company, I feel it makes more sense to release a dedicated device game instead since it's easier to project success and budget accordingly. However, Level 5 isn't a risk averse company, and frequently shoots for the stars in terms of both financial success and ROI, so this fits their business model.
