I remember that some people were suspecting that Ishgard itself would be Alexander, but I can't see that happening lol, I'd love for him to make an appearance though, and they'd need to make him massive, lol.
It also leaves Alexander as the only recurring summon that hasn't made an appearance in XIV yet. I reckon he'll end up being an Ishgardian primal that will be summoned in Heavensward in a similar manner to Shiva to the Dravanians.
Hopefully, LR did have that gap, but then again it wasnt a game of huge importance. Square Enix is definately getting a lot better at getting games out on time now.
The days of long development cycles and delayed releases are pretty much over, especially when it comes to AAA titles like this. The English language version is almost certainly being worked on alongside the Japanese version. I'll honestly be shocked if the Japanese and the English releases are anything further than a month apart at most.
They did the same for other FF games though, they said the demo is to generally get the idea across much better than a trailer would, they could probably make it to Christmas 2015 if they pushed hard enough though, I generally hope this has a worldwide release, since the western market is now much bigger than the eastern market.