In a recent interview with MVC, Sega Europe’s SVP of commercial publishing John Clarck talked about SEGA’s PC business and how it shaped the company’s future. Interestingly, he also commented on their desire to deliver Japanese content from the entire group within SEGA.
We’re very interested in bringing all of the group’s Japanese content not just to the West, but to Europe in particular.
While the article on MVC’s own website implies that John was talking about Atlus games in particular, it’s not entirely clear to me if that was actually the case, or if John was referring the “group” meaning both SEGA and Atlus. The latter would make more sense, because it would seem odd for SEGA Europe to express interest in releasing Atlus games when their own games such as 7th Dragon III Code: VFD and Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X haven’t even been confirmed for a release in Europe yet. Earlier on, community manager Dan Sheridan also told fans that Atlus are free to choose their own publisher in Europe.
Another interesting quote from the article is the following one:
We have a concerted effort and almost internal campaign for people wanting to bring all the Japanese content out in the West. Valkyria Chronicles is a great example of that where internally we pushed and found a way to remaster it for PC, which has gone on to lead to the console release.
The fact that the PC version of Valkyria Chronicles (ported by a UK studio) had gone on to lead to a remaster on PS4 (which to our knowledge was handled internally in Japan) may seem obvious, but it’s still interesting to see it confirmed here, and how it was an internal push that actually made it happen.
In the article, John Clarck also mentions that, even internally, people constantly ask them about Shenmue 1 & 2 HD remasters. More recently, community manager Dan Sheridan clarified the reason why these two haven’t been announced yet.
Finally, John also confirms that they’ll be showing Yakuza 0 at E3 through Atlus. The latter is probably referring to the fact that, as reported earlier, the game will be shown at the Atlus booth rather than the SEGA Europe one.
You can read the digital version of the magazine here, which contains the complete interview.