The list of Index's main creditors within the entertainment industry has been made public. Below is my translation of the numbers rundown for the alleged debt owed based on what was originally posted here, with the rankings being from most money owed, to least. It's an interesting gamut of companies, to say the least, spanning a pretty wide spectrum of industries. I'll note said industries for potential more obscure companies whose names don't make it obvious in parentheses for those not on the up-and-up with that sort of stuff.
- Production I.G. (anime): 44,100,000 yen
- ASCII Media Works (publishing): 31,251,000 yen
- Aquaplus (video games): 24,120,000 yen
- STUDIO MAUSU (anime): 17,314,000 yen
- Nintendo: 13,599,000 yen
- Pony Canyon (entertainment, esp. music): 12,373,000 yen
- Shueisha (publishing, esp. manga): 11,395,000 yen
- Enterbrain (publishing): 6,166,000 yen
- Fuji Television: 5,525,000 yen
- M-ON Entertainment (Sony Music subsidiary): 5,040,000 yen
- JASRAC (Japanese copyright collection group): 3,528,000 yen
- GREE: 2,506,000 yen
- Sega: 2,454,000 yen
- Movic (entertainment): 2,412,000 yen
- Yomiuri Advertising: 1,890,000 yen
- Aniplex (entertainment, esp. anime and music): 1,862,000 yen
- Wiz Inc. (toys): 1,737,000 yen
- Takara Tomy (toys): 1,370,000 yen
- T.O Entertainment [not an acronym error]: 1,260,000 yen
- Asahi Television: 1,218,000 yen
- Taito: 1,113,000 yen
- Gakken Publishing: 1,071,000 yen
- Tatsumi Publishing: 1,050,000 yen
To put these numbers into greater perspective, the grand total comes to 194,354,000 yen, which is roughly $2 million USD, 1.5 million euros, 1.3 million pounds for my American, European Union, and British compatriots. This figure alone might seem like a bit of a trifling number for a company dealing with bankruptcy, but again, this is not a complete list of Index's creditors; these are simply what we can presume to be are the ones with the biggest balances waiting to be paid. [MAJOR EDIT: I skimmed the early paragraph of the original Japanese source a bit too much during my initial reading. The reality of these figures is that these numbers account for how much Index owes to companies specifically within various entertainment and publishing industries; it otherwise owes a combined total of over $200 million to various other firms overall. These $2 million are therefore only about 1% of the entire amount of Index's debts.] Additionally, Index is still undergoing a government investigation into serious money laundering allegations. As I've written before, the results of that investigation should be able to put into greater perspective what financial resources it realistically had at its disposal without cooking the books, which is to say probably pretty bleak, the profitable standing of Atlus and the rest of Index's game sector notwithstanding.
The list of creditors is also interesting in a few places, given their relationship to Atlus specifically. I'll outline in bullet points the ones that really stick out to me below.
- Nintendo. This one should be relatively obvious, given that Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem is an Atlus-developed production in conjunction with Nintendo. It recently came to light through a developer interview that Nintendo was the one who approached Atlus initially with a proposal for the latter to make a Fire Emblem entry set in modern times. It's obvious Nintendo would have been bankrolling that project at least significantly, but that information probably indicates where the lion's share of that game's budget has likely come from. That being said, the number posited here is, if I were to guess, probably not debt that's related to that project. It's hard to know for certain without having insider access, obviously, but if that money is recent, it might be coming from Nintendo providing marketing support and, at least in Europe, publishing logisitics for Shin Megami Tensei IV, which has been promoted before on previous Nintendo Directs. I have no hard data to back up that hypothesis, though. [ANOTHER EDIT: The corresponding NeoGAF thread on this matter has also pointed out a more plausible theory, which is that these costs are probably related to cartridge manufacturing fees and whatnot. Considering that SMTIV and the remake of Etrian Odyssey 1 were both released in Japan recently really close to each other, these costs are likely related to that. Atlus itself is probably capable of paying these off in a timely manner, but will remain unable to do so for the time being until this bankruptcy business is settled because of legal rules. These numbers were therefore just listed as a matter of course.)
- GREE. This debt is probably more directly related to the mobile game-specific branches of Index, but since Atlus has been known to publish cell phone game spinoffs for its more popular franchises, including multiple cell phone MMOs for the Persona series, it's not out of the question that it might have an Atlus connection of some sort.
- Sega. Out of all the game companies listed here, this might prove to be one of the most confusing presences for those looking at this list, save for Aquaplus, which is a prominent visual novel company in Japan. (You're guess is as good as mine what they're doing here. Sorry.) However, the reason may very well likely like with Atlus' existing business relationship with Sega, which sees the latter handling shipping and distribution duties for the former's games within Japan. While not all that common of a business relationship in the Japanese game industry, especially considering Index is a publisher in its own right, it's not without precedence and has occasionally happened even outside of Japan. The reason is simply that some companies have better channels for game distribution and getting product to move around. This is a relationship that has only sprouted up in recent years and has been most visible to the public in the form of Atlus games having a presence at Sega booths at TGS.
- Takara Tomy. This is probably the most amusing creditor of all to show up on this list, simply because they were the previous owner of Atlus prior to Index's acquisition and subsequent merger within the last several years. Not entirely sure what relationship they might still have with Index beyond that. Perhaps they're responsible for some of the figure merchandising for Atlus' games?
I think I've pretty much said all I could possibly say about these numbers based on the original Japanese source and my own knowledge of the various business relationships involved. Still, I'll be happy to field questions if people have them.
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