Kresnik on 16 March 2014
What I'd take away from this: Lightning has a small but vocal internet minority who love her, but this isn't reflected in the public at large because of the poor sales of Lightning Returns.
What Square Enix will take away from this: The small amount of people who voted on this are more important than the 1.3m or so people who dropped off from XIII -> LR and so will continue to shoehorn her into stuff.
This strategy would be fine if Square Enix were the size of say, Compile Heart or Gust, who rely on small but dedicated fanbases to sell their games to. But they are not. They are one of the biggest players in the Japanese games industry.
