The move several were predicting is apparently official. According to a translation of Japanese business website nikkei.com, Index Corporation, the parent company of Atlus, has been purchased by Sega Sammy Holdings for 14 billion yen, roughly 140 million US dollars. The transfer is supposedly going to be finalized on November 14th. Other details are scarce at the moment, such as what games will be brought under the Sega umbrella, or what will be sold off to other studios. Other sources on this news are also hard to find as well, so take this with a grain of salt for the moment.
In any case, as a fan of several Atlus games, this both intrigues and worries me. I’m glad Atlus is going to live on, and it’s going to be rather cool to be able to cover games like my beloved Persona series here on our pokey little slice of the internet, but at the same time, I worry that some of Sega’s worst habits (like lack of advertisement, or localization for anything that isn’t Sonic as of late) will come into play in the worst way here. Fingers crossed that they let Atlus continue on as normal, and simply fund their games.
What do you all think of this move? Tell us in the comments.
UPDATE – 9/18 2:15AM EDT: Sega Sammy Holdings has commented on the news officially on their website. A translation of the quote by redshifts from Tumblr is as follows:
Today sources reported that our company, Sega Sammy, purchased the operations of Index but we have made no such announcement.
So the plot thickens. Perhaps the deal is done, and word leaked early, yet Sega wants to wait and announce it at Tokyo Game Show? Nikkei is usually a pretty reliable source when it comes to Japanese business dealings, so I wouldn’t write this one off just yet.
[Source: nikkei.com]
Sega has been on roll buying up good devs.
Sega are good at buying companies, but at this moment in time, they’re clueless as to what to do with them.
Company of Heroes 2 only just came out, but Sega have done little to no legwork to promote the game. I’d hate to see Atlus’ properties receive the same mistreatment.
Yea and it is a shame since Sega in a lot of ways is the company that made gaming advertising.
Bad bad news for western fans. We aren’t gonna get jack brought over here from Atlus properties. Hope sega keeps the atlus employees, they are damn talented.
I shared these same fears. With the huge lack of support from Sega on anything in the West these type of buyouts from them are scary times for gamers.