Atlus Is Now a Sega Joint

If Sega understands that Atlus knows how to budget and build games for its niche fanbase this could go okay. If Sega tries to broaden the appeal of Atlus's games we are just going to end up with a bunch of generic JRPGs that no one wants to play.

I'm happy that Atlus seems to be transitioning as one established unit as opposed to all the assets being sold off piecemeal, this could have gone way worse. I am giving the benefit of the doubt that Sega respects Atlus's track record.

I don't know how to feel about this. The name Sega hasn't meant shit in games for a good decade. Yet somehow they're still around even in today's economic climate. Then again this is probably a lot better than just simply letting Atlus wither and die.

Good luck with Sega, Relic and Atlus.

As long as they don't stop localizing shit for the US and have the same quality of localization, this is probably not a big deal. So now that this is taken care of can we please have some details on persona 5 finally?

I'm talking more about keeping Atlus USA around. If they get rid of Atlus USA in favor of doing in-house localizations that's almost as bad as not getting the game.

For me it's honestly a little silver lining that could mean finally getting some Atlus games in Europe. So I'm all for it. If they neglect us still, nothing's changing for us anyway.

@falling_fast said:

I'm deciding to be optimistic and just assuming that Sega will facilitate European publishing for Atlus going forward and little else will change. I'm learning Japanese as a precautionary measure though. (Always nice to have a back-up and I hear I can make 1000Yen+ a day translating from home.)

I like how your post could go in almost any topic on any message board, how about contributing to the discussion before you insult everyone else here you twat.

Hopefully Sega know better than to meddle with Atlus and give them publishing options in Europe so I dON'T HAVE TO FUCKING WAIT AN ENTIRE YEAR OR MORE FOR MY FUCKING PERSONA GAMES.
If not, the option to pirate or watch playthroughs on youtube never go away.

I think people are being fucking morons about this, to be honest.

of course, sega aren't bringing the yakuza games out here anymore at all because they claim there's zero interest in them, and they're supposedly trying to cut back on spending. hopefully the same won't happen to all of atlus's games.

Well, considering that over half of Persona 4 sales came from NA and EU and other Atlus games tend to get between 25% and 40% of their sales from the west, it would be in their best interest financially to continue localizing the majority of Atlus games for the west.

Just to put something into perspective, the purchase of Index Corporation isn't just for Atlus, although I'd be shocked if that wasn't the primary motivation. Other Index subsidiaries include the French company Index Multimedia (which I can't find much info on but according to a Bloomberg report had 42 employees as of Nov 2012) and Index Amusement, which appears to be a company that provides 3D short movies to amusement parks. Who knows how much Sega Sammy values those enterprises, but they're presumably part of the deal too.

While it's hard to find date on Atlus' Japanese financials, Atlus US made about ¥437 million ($5.39 million) in profit in 2010, an unusually strong year due to the success of Demon's Souls, and lost ¥104 million in 2009. So I can only assume that the Japanese side of the business is very lucrative due to strong sales on the 3DS, otherwise that valuation seems pretty high. Maybe it was inflated due to the high number of bidders.

I'll hold fire on this ordeal for a bit, I say we give it a year or two for Sega to familiarize themselves with the talent Atlus offers. I think the positive outcomes from this announcement are going to require strong community involvement. Sega needs to be kept in check and they need to know we are watching this very closely to see how they handle all of these franchises. Now, I am not saying Sega will listen to what we have to say, they have been known to disregard fan feedback, but then they step out and surprise everyone by localizing Miku. So I am not sure what to make of this. I think we will know where things stand by the end of the year. I would encourage those in the gaming media to stay on top of any developments and keep us posted on what Sega's long term plans are for this acquisition.

great. Can't wait to see "Yosuke and Chie at the Olympic Games"

I hope SEGA treats em well. They do alright by Creative Assembly so i hope they will do right by ATLUS too. Maybe fund them some persona! :p

Now Atlus games can not get localized too! :D

If it means Atlus games will be released in Europe, then FUCK YEAH ! Else... sure ?

@ll_exile_ll: I don't have enough faith in SEGA right now to trust that was their intention. I can't take it on faith that they care more about quality than profit. This is their chance to prove otherwise, but they still have to prove it.

@karkarov: I don't want Sonic in Persona (unless we're just talking like a plushie sitting somewhere in the background) but I'd totally be on board for an Atlus helmed Shining Force.

Platinum started off under the wings of SEGA and it didn't seem to have any problems making its batshit niche hella Japanese games. Not really worried about what's going to happen to Atlus' menagerie.

I am definitely uneasy about this for all the reasons everyone else has mentioned, but honestly, we have no idea how this is going to shake out, so for now I'm all right with waiting to see what happens. I really hope they just let Atlus be Atlus.

I see nothing wrong at all with Sega taking over Index, and by default, Atlus. There are plenty of other companies out there that would have been a much worse fit for them. They just need to let Atlus do their thing, and give them the ability to tie in some Sega brands as well. Who wouldn't be up for a Sonic cameo in Persona 5, or a re emergence of some of Sega's old brands like the Shining games only helmed by Atlus?

Nope, I don't like this one bit. Sega is a complete joke company(Valkyria Chronicles is the only game in the last decade I have liked by them) as far as i'm concerned and now when they've acquired Atlus I reckon there's a big possibillity they'll be contaminated as well.

Maybe us folk in Europe might get some equal treatment now and stop those morons focusing so damn hard on North America and nothing but North America when it comes to territories outside Japan. I hated Atlus to no end for all the shit they put us through, (durr, hey guys, let's release Persona 4 Arena and make it region locked because we're assholes then outsource and release it to Europe almost a year later) Let's see if Sega can finally knock some business sense into that useless company.

That is very true. ¥14 billion ($140 million) is a lot to throw around and that is after getting Relic Entertainment for $26.6 million. They are getting things that are worth keeping around and to help them up.

If this helps Persona 5 in some way then I'm all for it.

I don't know how I feel about this Senpai.

It's what some of Sega's questionable moves that concerns me.

Yes, hopefully Atlus just gets left to do what they want.

It could be really awesome or it could be really ghastly, we don't really know yet, but it does make me super uneasy. We could end up in a position where Atlus US gets gutted and we get less Atlus games, or Sega could start using Atlus' localization talents to localize their more niche titles that never make it here and leave their game production alone. The latter sounds ridiculously idealistic whenever I say it out loud, though.

That's 140 million I'd rather have seen spent on a localisation of Yakuza 5.

But now maybe they can hand it off to Atlus? Can't you look at this in both ways? I mean, won't it be possible that Atlus will now start bringing over Sega products Sega doesn't want to bring over themselves?

The other way obviously being that Sega will get in the way of Atlus bringing over stuff they otherwise would.

I understand the knee-jerk pessimism angle, but do all you doom and gloom types really think Sega would bother spending all the money to buy index, presumably solely for Atlus, and then precede to immediately blow everything up?

One would think part of why they made the deal was to acquire the amazing localization team at Atlus USA and to have a games division that can cater to the niches that Sega doesn't already have covered.

It makes no sense for them to make this purchase and then immediately do something drastic like stopping western Atlus releases or shutting down Atlus USA.

Sega Sammy has the money (From Sega games and Sammy Pachinko games). Their making money just not what we usually see.

Not if Sony has a say. Of course, that would mean Persona isn't a 3rd party property where SMT is.

This better not lead to Persona 5 being a Wii-U exclusive, cause I will not stand for that!
...

Though Persona on 3DS would be dope. Would Persona 4 Golden be possible on 3DS?

When the hell did Sega get all this money to be buying shit?

@alex: I don't know if this has been asked yet, but why is this filed under Electronic Arts?

Sega would be stupid to try and mess with the philosophy at Atlus but I wouldn't put it past them, that said it wasn't that long ago since the Dreamcast days when Sega were the ones breaking the moulds and bring the wierd japanese to the west so it could end up being a positive thing for both of them if it ends up rubbing off on Sega and gets them out of the creative rut they seem to be lately.

I can certainly think of a few companies that I would have next to no faith in not ruining Atlus so I think this has to be seen as good news.

Yess, yesssss, one step closer to Persona 5 on my PC! What with Sega saying they're a PC publisher lately.

We'll see how this turns out.

Any success Sega has had with their more niche Japanese IPs in the west has always seemed accidental - they just don't seem to understand the market and get it wrong more than they've ever got it right. Atlus knows what they're doing and it would be great to see Sega leverage that know-how where it makes sense with some of their IPs.

I don't think this will significantly change the core Atlus developed stuff, but it might be bad for fans of their even lesser known published games.

Teddy DLC for sonic all stars racing.

This concerns me. I hope Sega lets Atlus be Atlus.

This is honestly a better scenario than almost every other possible option (outside of them just staying independent). Can you imagine if Capcom bought them? Or SE? or Konami? Sega is the most likely of these publishers to actually leave Atlus to their own business. If anything, this might help Sega become something better in the long run.

Though of course there's always the chance of something going terribly wrong with this, but for now I don't think there's a reason to panic.

There had better be someone at Sega already working on a goddamn Chie Satonaka racer for Sonic All Stars Racing though.

I'm down as long as it means getting more of these games on PC.

Realistically, they can't make Persona games slower than they already are at coming to the US / Europe... right? Right? RIGHT!?

As long as sega stays out of Atlus way this is a good thing for both companies, now we just have to hope sega doesn't fail

This is either going to be fucking awesome or a fucking nightmare and there's really no way to know which way it'll go right now.

I really, really hope that Sega just lets Atlus keep doing what Atlus does.

I'm very sceptical about this, but I'll try and retain a little hope.

I'd actually buy it in a heartbeat.

Also, @alex, you have this attached to the Electronic Arts page. Rough morning? Can I get you some coffee?

I am honestly surprised Index went for as much as it did.

So a company that makes their rep in NA by bringing over games that would never come out here normally got bought by a company that just fucking hates America and doesn't bring anything interesting over.

Maybe I'm just bitter about Yakuza 5, but I don't trust Sega much for porting over their more uniquely Japanese games.