Following several months of uncertainty regarding Atlus’ future after its parent company, Index Corporation filed for bankruptcy, Sega has now confirmed that it has purchased Atlus and Index via auction, the later of which will be restructured into Sega Dream Corporation. When Index’s financial woes were made public, many were wondering who could swoop in to save the company, or at the very least the Atlus subsidiary which develops the beloved Shin Megami Tensei (Megaten) and Persona series . Nintendo and Sony were common suggestions from console fans but either of those would have probably led to future titles becoming platform-exclusive. Sega outbid around 20 other bidders to acquire Index and Atlus during the auction period and have already stated that they plan to maximize profits from the deal by utilizing IPs from the developer for console, mobile and PC games as well as creating new Pachninko / Pachislot games based on Atlus’ IPs. It shouldn’t be too long before Persona-branded Pachinko machines start popping up in Japan.
With popular Atlus series such as Etrian Odyesy, Shin Megami Tensei and Persona now under Sega’s belt, we would hope that this could lead to faster EU localisation for Atlus games since Sega is already well established in Europe with offices in several countries including the UK and France. Anyone who’s been following Atlus titles over the past few years knows that there’s usually a large period of time between the US and EU release, even as recent as earlier this year when Persona 4 Arena finally made its way to European shores more than a year after the American release date. Only time will tell. hopefully both companies will benefit from this union. And with some Sega games already containing multiple crossover characters, like Sonic All Star Racing Transformed, I wonder how long it will be before there’s a combination of Sega and Atlus IPs?
via Sega Sammy Holdings , Bloomberg