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Originally posted by: Infernal Monkey
Atlus sounds like a pretty excellent publisher. Extremely limited US distribution, no PAL releases at all. Best!
I should probably try and explain.
Atlus of Japan is I guess a medium-sized developer/publisher, most well known for "Shin Megami Tensei", an RPG series that was called "the biggest RPG series you've never heard of" back in the SNES days. It's sales keep up with Square and Enix RPGs in Japan, but since it deals with demons and modern-day Japan, nobody thought it would ever be seen outside of Japan.
Then in the PSX/N64 days, a startup American translation/publishing company wanted to give SMT a chance, so they talked to Atlus and became "partners" with them, becoming "Atlus USA". They're actually independant from Atlus of Japan, and they don't bring over everything Atlus makes, just the stuff they like (which is most of it). And they pick up games made by other developers.
They brought over Quest's Ogre Battle games (up until SquareEnix bought them up), and the first Nippon Ichi strategy RPGs. After Disgaea made it big, they even helped Nippon Ichi set up NIS America, so they could bring over their games for themselves. Atlus USA apparently did half the work on NIS America's first game.
Atlus USA is really just a small company though, so since they're taking huge risks with the weird kind of games no other publishers want to touch, they minimize their risks by never sitting on a lot of unsold product. When bigger publishers look at a game, they'll say "there might be 500 people in America who want that game". So they either bet that it'll somehow sell 5000, or they just skip it, saying it's not worth their time. Atlus USA thinks 500 sales is better than zero, as long as they like the game, so that's how they do it.
Topic: No more Phoenix Wright? (Read 12620 times)
