Great Knight, Japan got FFXI on the PS2 back in March... the game was then translated to the PC and released in August in the states, finally on the PS2 about 2 months ago.
The reason Japan only seems to have the PS2 version is simply, that there are more people in Japan with computers capable of running the PC version (as it requires a pretty beefy Geforce); As most japanese homes have a PS2, it's a simple case of update your PC or buy the PS2 version.
This is generally why most Asian computer games are aimed at such lowend systems and the console market is booming there.
As for why do developers do this?
To be honest... i'm partically clueless to why.
Sometimes redevelopment time would take too long, hense why some games aren't even translated language wise; this is also why the UK gets games so damn late.
It pisses me off that we have to wait for the 'European' languages to put into our games before they can be released in the UK, simply because the market isn't big enough on it's own to warrent releasing such a copy but they won't make US<->UK interchangeable games because of the import market.
If you ask me it's all totally stupid anyways.
Personally i'm going to just stick to developing them and letting the publishers handle all of the BS that comes afterwards.
[edit-] Can anyone tell me what my signature looks like... I updated the picture yesterday but for some reason it refuses to update in my signature.
