Yes, I know that holds true for LR. X3 had new models and I think they were all unique (maybe Kasumi and Kokoro shared a model and Nyo and Helena). Not sure if anyone ever ripped the X3 assets… I guess people that regularly consume SFM content might know
Either way, adding a new girl is more effort than adding the character itself. Even if you just have to replicate across 5 models and a subset of textures.
And it might very well be that DoAP did not make them any money…
I also fail to see how this comparison holds up… Scarlet does not remove characters from X3, it adds 2. If they add characters that are not already in VV they also need to create a lot of assets from scratch, which is – as pointed out above – more work than it seems at first glance.
And having “all the girls” is obviously way less effort in the DoAP days then it is now… it was 9 characters back then and it's 20(+1) characters now (if you include the VV girls and NiCO)
So it absolutely does not follow, that if they could do it back then, they can do it now. They market for these games did not grow and the costs to make games with some visual fidelity did not go down…
I also fail to see why you think that Scarlet has more budget than LR… it seems they are adding very little, so that contradicts that notion.
The market for DoAX games is small, especially with an Asia only release, while the target audience for LR was definitely larger.
Though I'm honestly not quite sure why they are releasing Scarlet on PS4, if they have to take out features from X3 and the Switch version, but I guess they had plans for the project before Sony's policy change (do people call them Soyny… someone probably does lol )
Seems they primarily want to grab the Switch market and the PS4 version is an afterthought anyway, might have been better to just restart selling paid DLC for X3… and just give it a patch that changes the title to Scarlet in the menu (and adds proper Pro support *cough* )