If there is one ting almost criminal that Sega does, it is sitting on its wealth of franchises and IPs and outright ignoring them, choosing instead to focus on milking Sonic, and relying on its subsidiary owned companies’ outputs. Seriously, franchises like Crazy Taxi, Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, Nights, Phantasy Star, and so on- all dead, all dormant, because Sega won’t do anything with them. It hurts.
Well, Sega’s newest acquisition- fan favorites Atlus, who are behind the excellent Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games- are welcome to use old, dormant Sega IPs and bring them back, should they want to, Sega’s president said.
“The plan is to have Atlus and Sega continue shining as brands, while aiming to increase their degree of independence. Similar to the studio we’ve acquired from overseas, they’ll continue managing their own brands and IPs, and making them bigger. Then, Sega will be the ones to sell them. So, think of it as us telling them “Continue working on your own IPs with pride and confidence—the sky is the limit,” company president Naoya Tsurumi said in an interview with Famitsu, reports Siliconera.
“We’d definitely love to have them utilize any of Sega’s dormant IPs. There are plenty that haven’t been active. However, the new company just recently got started, so there’s nothing on the table for now, but we’ll definitely be giving it more thought.”
Atlus’s expertise lies mostly in developing RPGs, so it’s unclear what they could do with something like Jet Set Radio; on the other hand, games like Sakura Wars, Skies of Arcadia, and Phantasy Star could greatly benefit. We’ll see.
It’s just great to see that Sega does not intend on interfering with Atlus’s running too much.