We've always known the reason certain games don't come out is because NOA feels they wont sell. It's not like Reggie and Iwata throw darts on a board to make their localization decisions, it's always involved a bigger process like this. And yes Xenoblade and The Last Story were viewed the same way until Operation Rainfall showed NOA there was interest in them.
Had people back in 2008 showed the same type of outrage they did for those games for Disaster, we might have gotten it. Instead, no one really cared and then the game went on to bomb in both Japan and Europe which is why NOA felt they were right not to release it.