It might have sold bad on Steam, but we have GOG and PSN to also look at for sales.
And in the interview it mentions they wouldn't care giving the work of The 3rd to "other publishers". We're not publishers, and we're certainly not ones who would monetize the game, but as it stands, what XSEED is saying is they won't exactly support fan-translations, most probably because Falcom might not want it. Do I have to say already that Falcom allows XSEED to translate the games because they want some income out of it?
If anything, for us Kiseki fans the true light would be for Falcom to recognize english players and go all "English players want us! We must make someone publish these in english!". <---Pretty much like Namco Bandai at the moment.
For now, I would just advise to recommend FC and SC as much as you can so that it sells well and XSEED decides to do The 3rd. If that doesn't happen, then we'll be able to decide by ourselves what to do with The 3rd at that time.