You said
However, it's entirely plausible (and more plausible than other arguments) that KT simply thinks the game won't make a profit or enough of a profit to be worth dedicating the resources to releasing and supporting it outside of Japan and Asia.
One could argue the poor performance (critically and financially) of the second game worldwide gives KT an excuse not to release the third game worldwide.
The article that Lime talked about makes a pretty good argument that the reason for the game not coming to the west is most likely not an economic one.
It's not an argument that is completely shut down, since we're not Koei Tecmo's accountants, but there's good reason to have the economic motive towards the bottom of the pile when discussing reasons why the game isn't coming to western shores.
So no, it's not "undeniable" that DOAX3 isn't getting a western release because of the current feminist movement in the western video games industry. The slipperiness of the official statement is the usual slipperiness of typical company official statements that can't say anything and won't say anything. To suggest that the official statement is exacting proof of your theory is incorrect.
You're right in that it isn't an open and shut case, hence the open discussion.
I was being hyperbolic, sorry about that.
One could argue the design and direction of the game targets the otaku 'whales' willing to spend a lot of money on DLC and merchandise of particular characters featured in the game. Said whales are not in abundance outside of Asia and therefore are not worth sustaining the costs of supporting the product for. (see anime)
Given the most recent iteration of DoA5 had a similar abundance of DLC, and Koei Tecmo release a statement about it stating "DoA DLC sales have [been] met with great success in Europe and US, predominantly because the fan base has expanded significantly on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One," I'm not so inclined to believe this.
One could argue that of the nine characters in the game, seven are Japanese, with one of the remaining two non-Japanese being specifically a lolicon-targeted design. By excluding most of the western-oriented characters, the game itself has limited its appeal to Asia. Therefore it also loses its ability to market characters that would appeal to the western audience more and encourage expenditures on DLC costumes and the like.
This is actually a pretty good aspect I hadn't thought of.
The polls to choose the characters even only counted Japanese purchases.
I can definitely imagine this being at least a factor in the decision to not bring the game to the west.
Sure, the series is well-known for its sexual objectification. But precisely because it is well-known, if KT has weathered the deluge of criticism before, why start cowering now? Rather, if they got 'bad publicity' it would actually reduce the amount of money they need to market the game, because the bad publicity is free publicity. And DOAX3 is certainly not lying about what it is, so it isn't as if the audience who were going to purchase it day one were suddenly going to not purchase the game because of social media outrage or critique or anything like that. It also benefits from being part of an existing series, which means it's not a rapid and sudden change to what the 'original games' were to something that panders to its audience.
Because the climate is changing. People are less accepting of the sexual objectification that DoAX series not only has but touts as a main feature.
Heck, competitive players were even tossing around the idea of having a soft ban of the more sexually exploitative costumes in DoA5:LR, and these are the people that specifically chose to play Dead or Alive over the more superior Virtua Fighter series.
I know it's a common saying that bad publicity isn't actually bad, but that only applies to a point. Too much bad publicity and it reflects badly on the parent company, which no company wants. It seems way more likely to me than any of the other reasons that Koei Tecmo at the very least
believed that the bad publicity associated with releasing the game to western audiences wasn't worth whatever profits they'd have made bringing it.
"Respecting and strategizing to support the different global audiences" can mean any number of things and is not restricted to the feminism boogeyman. Keeping your view so narrowly focused on that when there has been no major feminist or social media criticism of the game before this statement was issued is merely projecting your narrative onto the likely myriad of factors KT considered when making the decision about where to release the game.
Regardless of whether or not you were venting against SJWs, holding onto and fixating on the idea that 'feminism' is specifically what prevents the release of this game is just making excuses for people who lack the reasoning to consider the decision process, or making excuses for people who are insistent on making a boogeyman where there is none.
I don't understand why you keep insisting that I think feminism is some sort of boogeyman?
I never stated or implied that I thought feminism was some sort of
bad change that's destroying everything I love about videogames or whatever.
I only said that a movement of feminism is making waves throughout the western videogame industry, and that this game not coming to the west is an acknowledgement that those waves are meaningful and real.
It's a bit weird and clumsy, but I view a foreign market looking in at the western videogame industry and recognizing the fact that the audiences here are less open to the blatant objectification of women than we were before as a good thing.