Because they did not charge extra for the surround SACDs, I would guess that, as stated above by many, the added cost of the work and acquisition of the quad tracks would have to reflect in added sales to the same title being sold without those quad tracks.
This might be very hard to figure. I mean, if you release a stereo SACD of Paul Anka's "The Painter", how many sales would you get. With all due respects to Paul, probably not many. If you went the extra mile and added the discrete quad tracks to the SACD, would you get many more sales? Again, probably not.
So now, does this Paul Anka "The Painter" 4.0 SACD get slammed by the bean counters claiming that it did not sell because it had a 4.0 red circle on the cover, or because buyers thought it would not play on their stereo-only system? The quad track inclusion would be a convenient way to blame the lack of sales on a release, instead of blaming the selection of the title itself as the reason it did not sell.
I have to admit, I have told Marshall over the last year or so that titles he mentioned to me as possible releases were not worth the extra cost of doing the quad tracks if it meant that the mentioned release might be the eventual reason the quad program got canned. As big a quad-guy as I am, I admit there are/were some shitty titles released in quad and 5.1 over the last 40 or so years. Many un-worthy titles. And bringing them back at the expense of a worthy release, to me, is not a good idea.
If it had no impact on future releases, I would say "Go for it". Who cares? There are always people out there who like something, and those people might have been thrilled with these 4.0 SACD. The rest of you would have gone nuts, proclaiming "I'm not buying that crap" and "Why are they doing that lousy album?"
I've said it before and will again, we are at the END of the physical media era. Check out your local Targets, Best Buys, Walmarts, etc. See how their CD/DVD/BluRay sections are shrinking. My local Sams does not even sell DVD/BluRay movies anymore. And the BJ's and Costco's who once had CDs and large DVD sections now have a token shelf. People are now living with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Spotify, etc etc. Earbuds don't care about surround.
For companies like AF, the future is tenuous. They can't afford to make many mistakes.
We want a lots of surround SACDs, they want to stay in business.
We can only hope that those two goals merge from time to time.