I'm just wondering what the bar is for "close enough" here. Like, in the context of the discussion, what are we looking at to see if it would be an appealing strategy for another company.
For Ninokuni, I don't think it was just about tailoring the "same game" to different platforms. Instead they were clearly making two different games based on similar story material, for two platforms. There was considerable effort invested into it, and I'm not sure if I'll agree it was even successful based on the intent.
The DS version of Ninokuni uses fixed camera backgrounds, a completely turn based battle system, and the physical magic spell book was packed in with every copy. It was intended to be a very exciting new toy for kids, banking on the Ghibli brand. Level5 didn't seem very pleased with the 600k or so it sold in Japan, considering the potential the DS had.
The PS3 version of Ninokuni is a fully 3D game with adjustable camera, a realtime battle system with AI party members, and it's designed to use a virtual spellbook in the game instead because stores apparently didn't like stocking the huge DS package. It ended up selling about 100k in Japan, which was a huge disappointment. It also came out a whole year after the DS version, because development took much longer. Sure, the overseas sales seemed to be pretty good (at 1.4 million sold for the series, that puts the sales outside of Japan at about 700k I guess?).
So in the end they funded two complete development teams to make two different games based on the same source concept, and one game sold 600k worldwide (the DS version was never released outside of Japan), while the other game sold 800k worldwide. For a huge undertaking like this, I would say it wasn't a very successful project at all. Level5 has many other games which sell way more than that - Layton, Inazuma Eleven, Yokai Watch. And all of these games were brand new IPs without the "brand power" of Ghibli, and the resources put into making two big RPGs on different platforms.
I guess in the end the question is - would it really be smart for S-E to look at this example and want to do it too?