Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka made some interesting comments regarding business plans for Atlus’s products moving forward – more specifically regarding release of Atlus products outside of Japan. This by way of Gematsu‘s translation of a Japanese Playstation Blog post featuring a reprinting of Hiraoka’s comments to a recent issue of Dengeki Playstation. By the way, if you didn’t already know, the Japanese Playstation Blog has been host to quite a few entries featuring Yakuza content as of late, so it’s been receiving quite some content featuring Sega properties.
I’ve reproduced the comments that Gematsu translated below, directly:
“In terms of the marketplace, from here on I want to put even more strength into our overseas efforts,” Hiraoka said. “Up until a few years ago, there were some things, including the development of our international website, that we left to staff overseas. However, in recent years we’ve been wanting to make sure everyone gets the same information, so we made it so you can jump to the global website from the home page of the official site in Japanese.”
Hiraoka continued: “As you can also see from the close Japanese and foreign release dates for Dragon’s Crown in 2013 due to its online elements, the barrier between the domestic and overseas market is dying. As for Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, it will go on sale in America on June 7 and in Europe in Q2, and while it is slightly delayed from the Japanese release date, it will not only be localized into English, but also French, Italian, German, Spanish for a total of five languages.
What is mentioned here regarding websites and information is already observable. As my colleague Draikin pointed out, the English page for Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F is actually hosted on Sega’s Japanese domain for Project DIVA games. While not Atlus-related, with Atlus being a part of Sega the point should be clear. If Sega West hosted it then it might offer its own signal about Sega West, but this is nice to see in any case.
Such comments do seem positive, in any case. Atlus has historically not had the strongest presence in Europe, whether in the form of a delayed release for Shin Megami Tensei IV or the lack of self-managed localizations for their products in Europe. In the past year NISAmerica handled distribution of Atlus titles. It isn’t entirely clear that Atlus will be publishing games themselves in Europe, so let us see what the company does with its next titles.
It’s interesting to note that Atlus sees the “domestic vs overseas barrier” as dissipating. Those are rather confident words. Sega has vowed to learn from Atlus since the latter’s acquisition, so one can hope that such a mindset is incorporated into the former’s company culture. Sega has been of the opinion that it’s important to adapt their games for Western tastes, but Atlus’s philosophy on localization doesn’t seem to view that as similarly necessary, or at least not to an especially significant degree. Atlus seems to take a stronger position on the “niche-ness” of their titles, and Sega so far seems keen on more broader reception of the comparatively niche IPs within their own stable.
The promise of an EFIGS localization is quite exciting, and a release window of Q2 2016 for Europe puts the region in close company with the US. This might bode well for Atlus and European Atlus fans!