During the latest SEGA Central, SEGA Europe Community Manager Dan Sheridan answered another batch of #AskSEGA questions from the fans. When asked by Suketodara whether or not they’re planning to bring 7th Dragon III Code: VFD to Europe, Dan answered:
Right now there are no plans to bring 7th Dragon to Europe. However, we know that there are European SEGA fans who are keen to see a release. There’s nothing we can confirm today, but we are looking if it’s something we can make happen.
While we got positive localization news from SEGA Europe last week (when the SEGA 3D Classics Collection was confirmed for a European release), this answer is unfortunately a bit less reassuring. Hopefully, we’ll still see the game make it to Europe, along with Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X (which has also not been confirmed for a release in Europe yet).
Recently, NIS America broke ties with Atlus, revealing that they would no longer be publishing Atlus games in Europe. ShaneC1991 asked SEGA Europe if they were going to take a more active role in bringing Atlus games to Europe, to which Dan commented the following:
SEGA very much treats Atlus as an independent label, and as a result it’s up to Atlus to choose who they partner with to release their titles. We’re all big fans of Atlus games here at SEGA Central, and we’re looking forward to hearing more news on Atlus European releases shortly.
While this doesn’t exclude the possibility that SEGA Europe may publish Atlus titles in the future, it does make it clear that it’s also entirely possible that Atlus will find a different partner to publish and distribute their games in Europe. Of course, we do hope that this doesn’t translate in delays for the European release of Atlus games, something which had been a problem for the company in the past.
Our thanks go to Dan and SEGA Europe for answering these questions from the fans. You can view the latest episode of SEGA Central below!
Looking at the amount of people asking, there is a little bit of hope they answer those for a reason, because Sega saying “there are still no plans” can perfectly mean “we are not planning to announce it yet because reasons” which would actually be an announcement (like the 3D ages release, he actually answered that two weeks ago on the comments, but he deleted it some hours later), maybe they are considering a digital release, like Capcom with the Phoenix Wright games which at this point I’m glad I can play them.
And I’d like to know what differences are between “publishing” and “distributing”, I guess the second one is only logistics and deals with the first one? I say this because it’s been more than a decade since Sega distributed a single game in Europe, it’s Koch Media the one doing it right now, so I really don’t know what difference is there if Sega publishes Atlus games here or not.
I just find it incredibly dumbfounding that a company the size of Sega that has released all of their previous 3DS games properly somehow couldn’t release 7th Dragon in here, as well. It’s like they don’t trust there’s a market for it, even though they are more than ready to publish all the PS4 games like Valkyria Chronicles and Yakuza Zero properly.
I just hate it that when there’s finally something truly great coming from Sega themselves that’s NOT Sonic or some sports games, they themselves don’t care enough about it to properly release the game in EU. Why does the neglected one have to be 7th Dragon?
Also, Sega bought Atlus so seeing how their EU releases are actually getting even worse and more uncertain is incomprehensible. At least when they were partnered with NISA we could trust that the games would get a proper retail release in here, no matter what the game would be, but once again we are off to the wonderful world of one-and-a-half year delays and digital-only releases that only manage to make the fans mad.
I just flat out hate the situation we’re currently in.
I think there is a specific concern about 3DS demographics, specially in Europe, if you release a game only in English, you are releasing it only for two isles and a portion of grown ups on the rest of the continent, and they are provably not going to translate it to 2-5 extra languages if they are so insecure lol being from Spain I’ve read a thousand times on forums things like “they don’t translate? I don’t play”, even on super niche titles that took years to come out of Japan, they don’t care, they’ve had other titles translated for the past 20 years and they will stick to them, some people even don’t like undubed games because they don’t like reading subtitles… (I’ve actually seen that too from English speakers regarding Yakuza lol)