Not sure what you mean about the Platinum engine, but I do think that hiring P* to port the game would be overkill. I mean, the team that did such a great job with VC had nothing to do with the original developers or Canvas Engine (Did that engine ever get used for anything else? Or was it mothballed?) As for perception, I understand that Sega had to make that port in a ridiculously short amount of time? Sega has also proven themselves capable of PC porting now, so I don't think people would judge them by a years old PS3 port.
Well supposedly since they managed to put MGR:Revengeance on PC which uses the same engine as Vanquish and Bayo, the major work is already done...unless I'm perceiving that wrong. I don't necessarily recall what went down with PS3 port, other than it was outsourced to Nex Entertainment, which is obviously not the PC/Shanghai team, but people still like to point that port in Bayo discussions last I checked.
Doesn't help that Platinum themselves call the port their greatest failure, plus I think they've said they want to avoid these kinds of situations again with their titles (not sure if that even matters in this case).
Jet Set Radio actually did really well, it's NiGHTS that ended up selling under expectations that killed that movement off.
I'd also honestly advise against not releasing Valkyria Chronicles 2, despite it's fault, having missing games in a series always hurt them. Despite it not being as good as the original, I still think there is an audience for it on PC but IF SEGA decides to start porting Playstation Portable games on the platform and if it is successful and they entertain the idea of translating Valkyria Chronicles 3, it opens up titles like 7th Dragon. As we've seen from the likes of XSEED and Marvelous, Playstation Portable ports can great sellers on the platform.
SEGA though must treat it as a revenue stream rather than looking at initial sales, the beauty about the PC marketplace is games tend to keep selling long after the first month, something you can rarely say about console games.
Yeah Platinum Games was the reason that Playstation 3 port was so broken. Not to absolve SEGA of the blame but basically Platinum only had the game running for the Xbox 360 and didn't have the resources/wanted to get it out for the Playstation 3 so without SEGA's intervention there would be no Playstation 3 port.
Huh, interesting to hear that NiGHTS was the one that failed, especially since it didn't have music licensing issues that JSR had.
I may be wrong on the PSP ports not being well-received on the PC platform, but I'm just worried about what move would beneficially to the franchise. I'd like to see interest renewed and 3 localized if it all possible. Mechanically speaking, apart from a few thing such as random drops for credits, VC2 is a solid game...the story/narrative itself was a major turn-off. Though to be honest, being on the PSP platform itself didn't help when the game hit the Western market.
Can't seem to recall that part regarding the PS3 port...you know, I only often hear the Platinum side of these issues, I just don't know how much of it is true/spin/different viewpoints. Again, not to absolve SEGA from fault on their own actions, but it does add some perspective.