European SEGA / Atlus deal with Deep Silver further explained, why SEGA Europe isn’t publishing
SEGA / Atlus announced this past week that, going forward, Deep Silver will be publishing their games across Europe. It’ll begin with the likes of 7th Dragon III: Code VFD and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, with the relationship continuing in the future.
SEGA recently took to its official blog and commented on the situation further in a new post. Additionally, the publisher explained why it has chosen not to handle games internally through something like SEGA Europe.
Here’s the full response:
Stop me if you’ve heard this before:
“We’re working on it.”
It’s an oft-used PR phrase that people have come to see as a general throwaway response. And while I can’t speak for every case, I can at least tell you that when it comes to publishing SEGA Japanese IP games (and ATLUS’!) in Europe, it’s true. We are working on it. Or were, really, since we just inked a deal with Deep Silver to release multiple upcoming titles in Europe. Physical versions.
That means that 7th Dragon III Code: VFD will be coming to European regions as both a physical and digital title, which will be published by Deep Silver for the EU territory.
The next question out of your mouth I’m sure is “but why? You have SEGA Europe, use them!” Yes, we do have a European branch, but they’re very much their own business, and as a business unit, SEGA Europe focuses on our Western IP titles – the titles developed by our Western studios such as Creative Assembly, Relic Entertainment, Sports Interactive and in partnership with studios such as PlaySport Games. With the majority of those titles being released on PC, we’ve seen an evolution of SEGA Europe into a more digitally-centric business over the last few years. For any packaged releases of SEGA Europe Western IPs they already partner with Deep Silver to bring those titles to market in Europe. It made sense to mirror that partnership with the SEGA of America-managed Japanese IP titles which currently have a heavier bias towards physical release. Sega Europe will still be publishing Yakuza 0.
Added bonus – this deal also applies to some upcoming ATLUS titles, so if you’ve been hankering for Persona 5 or Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, Deep Silver has the EU covered!
We aren’t ready to share release dates for those just yet, but for all our fans in Europe, we can finally say “we worked on it, and now we’ve got an answer for you.”
