Here's what I am not getting... For all that people decry the decreasing popularity of Star Wars, and that affecting model kit sales, for all that I keep hearing "big kits don't sell in their primary market", for all that I hear their primary market is Japan and not the US...
The PG Falcon sold out one production run, and they had to get another out, when I am pretty sure they hadn't initially intended to. And it was not cheap. B-Wings and Y-Wings are much harder to find these days. Even the oft-released X-Wings are fewer and pricey as heck. Without getting into quality assessments, the newer films aren't as iconic. I see lots of "Poe Dameron's X-Wing" kits sitting around -- TFA, TLJ Boosted, TROS orange-and-white. I see the odd TIE Striker, sometimes Darth Vader's TIE, but no TIE Fighters, and certainly no TIE Interceptors. The occasional First Order Special Forces TIE, but semi-frequently their standard TIEs. I have not seen their 1:144 Slave I anywhere, ever.
For some reason, companies seem to underestimate the appeal of certain craft and/or scales, while overestimating others. I find more 1:144 kits listed on Amazon and eBay, and, usually, for less of a price increase since release, than 1:72. And when a Slave I is listed, the most common is FineMolds' 1:72 AOTC/Jango version or Revell's box scale. Less frequently Bandai's 1:144, and, once in the last year, FineMolds' 1:72 Boba, for a lot. Just looking at the markets... The US has close to three times the population of Japan, and maybe a little over half the population of Europe. Bandai would be stupid to ignore their domestic market, but equally stupid to ignore the many times more customers elsewhere. I don't know what sorts of non-competition agreements they have to reach with other companies, but I'd argue that Bandai releasing a 1:72 Slave I would be nowhere near as large as their Falcon, and not competing with Revell's box-scale offering. People will buy the scale they want.
Even if it's 3-to-1 small domestic-appeal to larger international-appeal per year, that'd still be a not-unwise investment. They can look around and see what's still sitting on virtual store shelves as easily as I can. They can see what of their fellow-Japanese company's releases are still highly-sought-after on the secondary market. They can see people passing over 1:144 models and driving the price up on 1:72. They can see people ignoring box-scale kits in favor of scaled. They can see post-Disney items rusting unsold while OT and even PT items dwindle in availability and increase in price. They can see what garage kits are being offered of various craft and how frequently they're unavailable and sought after.
Bandai has been in businees for decades. Trust me, they know. They know the demand and the market and that they could release certain things, even as a limited edition, even only to the US market, and it'd still be printing money for them. I think their biggest misstep was the star destroyer. It was in an awkward size -- a little too big to be convenient for the space-limited, a little too small to compete with the Zvezda. The people who want big still have the latter as an option, even with all the up-detailing required. The people who want small will look at the Bandai and go "too big". Do I remember right that it's smaller than the old MPC of enduring re-pops? There are enough aftermarket mods for that one that, if I were to be in the market for a star destroyer kit, I'd go with an up-detailed MPC over a Bandai. But I also don't really care. Biggest Star Wars kit I want is a 1:72 ESB Falcon. And I cannot see how that hasn't been released. They already have more than half the tooling, the ANH was already designed in a way that facilitates the five-gear ESB lower as an option, and they have to know at least one run would sell through.
