Standard corporate announcement. Who knows, maybe they actually thought no one would buy their game over in the US. But since we have data that shows this hasn't been the case at all with previous titles of this sort, I kind of doubt that.

I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of days. Maybe it's just another case of Japan not understanding the West? Even if the game would sell poorly in the US/EU, they're gonna make an English version anyway, so why not just put it up digitally? It just makes no sense in this day and age were every "developer" and their mum can put their games out on Steam, XBLA etc.