Shin Megami Tensei IV

It's worth pointing out that, as near as anyone outside the company can tell, Atlus' "teams" aren't totally fixed. There are a few loosely-described teams (Team Persona, Maniacs Team) but they aren't strict internal divisions like Nintendo's different development groups. Some people are considered part of both Team Persona and Maniacs Team, for example. So yes, there are hands-on connections between Shin Megami Tensei IV and Trauma Center, although in this case it looks like the most obvious connection is just the character designer.

Well, I had a big response typed up, then the site dying ate it. I don't really want to re-type it all, so the tl;dr is that I don't agree that internally developed by Atlus is a stronger signal of quality than published by Atlus because Atlus really only internally develops 2 things - SMT and Trauma Center. Demon's Souls, Odin Sphere, Tactics Ogre, and a ton of other really great Atlus titles are all only published by them. This list pretty much shows what I mean.

Note that I'm NOT saying that Atlus does not have strong quality standards for their own titles, this is a signal strength comparison argument not an absolute one.

Catherine and the Etrian Odyssey series are BIG reasons I love Atlus. Also saying SMT is only one thing is kind of nebulous. Atlus also publishes stuff that I don't consider to be that great.

I stand by my statement. Atlus developed is a borderline instant buy. Atlus published is just instant interest.

Edit: They also did Radiant Historia. That wasn't instant-buy quality though, unfortunately.

Regardless, the original point that developed by Atlus doesn't imply some sort of similarity and that those games are closer to published by than developed by is objectively incorrect.

Then I'll agree to disagree. The games that brought me to Atlus in the first place are what keep me coming back, and those were the published titles they took a chance on like Demon's Souls, Odin Sphere, and Code of Princess (even though Code of Princess wasn't what I'd hoped it would be). The internally developed stuff is the icing to me.

EDIT: On another note, it seems to me Atlus frequently gets screwed on some of these publishing deals. They are responsible for some amazing game series coming out of Japan, notably Disgaea and Demon's Souls, and then get them ripped away when the series becomes a success. Seems to me Atlus ought to be rewarded with subsequent publishing deals, for things like Dark Souls and Disgaea 2-4, but sadly that's not how business works.

ahrezmendi wrote:

EDIT: On another note, it seems to me Atlus frequently gets screwed on some of these publishing deals. They are responsible for some amazing game series coming out of Japan, notably Disgaea and Demon's Souls, and then get them ripped away when the series becomes a success. Seems to me Atlus ought to be rewarded with subsequent publishing deals, for things like Dark Souls and Disgaea 2-4, but sadly that's not how business works. :(

There was an interesting article on Atlus USA's publishing deals and apparently they weren't large enough/set up to handle Dark Souls. It was actually voluntary, unfortunately.

Unless if you can cite specifically how Atlus teams are laid out and how they work on different titles, you can't say that my statement is objectively incorrect. In this case I will stand by my statement, barring evidence to the contrary.

EDIT: That's too bad, especially given how much a phenomenon Dark Souls has become compared to Demon's Souls.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Unless if you can cite specifically how Atlus teams are laid out and how they work on different titles, you can't say that my statement is objectively incorrect. In this case I will stand by my statement, barring evidence to the contrary.

Published by Atlus means developed by one of many companies, all of which can operate completely differently. To use a much clearer example, it's like saying "Developed by BioWare" vs "Published by EA." That's how different the two scenarios are. BioWare has separate teams working on separate games, but there's still a common thread.

So... Shin Megami Tensei IV. Developed in-house by Atlus. Pretty cool, eh?

That's evidence that wasn't presented before. I do NOT work in games, so you're privy to information I do not possess. It's not fair to my part of the discussion to say that my statement is objectively wrong when I don't have the same information you do. Now that I do know that, I'll cede the point.

Same company != same team nor even same thread. Where I work, a very VERY large company, a ton of teams work on similar projects, sometimes under the same umbrella, yet have no interaction with each other. It's just not the same everywhere as it is where you are.

ahrezmendi wrote:

That's evidence that wasn't presented before. I do NOT work in games, so you're privy to information I do not possess. It's not fair to my part of the discussion to say that my statement is objectively wrong when I don't have the same information you do. Now that I do know that, I'll cede the point.

Same company != same team nor even same thread. Where I work, a very VERY large company, a ton of teams work on similar projects, sometimes under the same umbrella, yet have no interaction with each other. It's just not the same everywhere as it is where you are.

True enough, and I actually redacted it because I feel dirty about it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

So... Shin Megami Tensei IV. Developed in-house by Atlus. Pretty cool, eh?

July is too far off. So is August for Project X Zone. My 3DS is going to be very lonely for the next few months.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

So... Shin Megami Tensei IV. Developed in-house by Atlus. Pretty cool, eh?

Yes

I'm looking forward to more English version media goodies. Atlus is uuuuussually kinda slow about the US website updates, but the Soul Hackers website more or less magically appeared fully functional after a "coming soon" form relatively quickly, so I'm holding out hope they've started speeding up and it wasn't just a one time fluke.

The tough part will be the period between the Japanese release and the American one. Avoiding spoilers while still wanting to sniff out media from the American version will be tricky

ahrezmendi wrote:

Well, I had a big response typed up, then the site dying ate it. I don't really want to re-type it all, so the tl;dr is that I don't agree that internally developed by Atlus is a stronger signal of quality than published by Atlus because Atlus really only internally develops 2 things - SMT and Trauma Center. Demon's Souls, Odin Sphere, Tactics Ogre, and a ton of other really great Atlus titles are all only published by them. This list pretty much shows what I mean.

You know the real reason Atlus didn't pick up on the sequels for those games? They didn't sell enough for Atlus USA to make enough a profit. Or someone else picked up the developer. Or the dev decided to self publish.

Demon Souls didn't break 500k sales in the US. Also, Sony lists Demon Souls as a first party IP now, so it's not really clear if Atlus is still getting money for it. Remember, Atlus USA handles more than just distribution. They also translate the games.

Atlus isn't translating any of the Super Robot Taisen Original Generation games either, because they didn't sell.

Quest(Ogre Battle) was snapped up by Square. There haven't been new games in that series since Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis for the GBA.

Disgaea is now self published by Nippon Ichi Software America. They decided to go that route.

And Atlus is still publishing Vanillaware's games.

cube wrote:

And Atlus is still publishing Vanillaware's games.

Some of them, not all. See Muramasa.

I don't know what happened surrounding Demon's Souls nor why Sony lists it as a first party IP. The first party IP part is really strange, the game is most definitely a From Software game and that is not a Sony studio. My point surrounding that is, regardless of copies sold, Demon's Souls resulted in Dark Souls being released world wide from the beginning which sold 1.19M copies in the US/Europe. That's a pretty big legacy to start.

Also, if Dark Souls, generally considered a pretty big success, only sold 1.19M units between US/Europe, then 500k for Demon's Souls in the US alone seems pretty good.

And your comment about the self-publishing was my main original point, and that it sucks from Atlus' perspective to be responsible for bringing over these series that then go on to be huge. I didn't say there weren't reasons for that, nor that those reasons were bad in some way, just that it sucks.

ahrezmendi wrote:

July is too far off. So is August for Project X Zone. My 3DS is going to be very lonely for the next few months.

I really wish Rune Factory 4 were being released in June instead of July. I've still got a healthy backlog of 3DS games I want to get, but I hate that that and SMT IV are releasing the same day.

Ferret wrote:

I'm looking forward to more English version media goodies. Atlus is uuuuussually kinda slow about the US website updates, but the Soul Hackers website more or less magically appeared fully functional after a "coming soon" form relatively quickly, so I'm holding out hope they've started speeding up and it wasn't just a one time fluke.

The tough part will be the period between the Japanese release and the American one. Avoiding spoilers while still wanting to sniff out media from the American version will be tricky :(

If you're on Twitter, the Atlus feed is a good one to follow. They call out new trailers and websites and artwork and such without revealing any spoiler information. They're not as awesome as the XSeed feed, which is a gold standard for customer interaction over Twitter, but they're pretty good.

The Atlus Faithful mailing list is pretty good too. The e-mails do not parse well, but the subject line has the pertinent info.

Also, if Dark Souls, generally considered a pretty big success, only sold 1.19M units between US/Europe, then 500k for Demon's Souls in the US alone seems pretty good.

Sony published the game in Japan. SCE Japan also has developer credits for the game.

Atlus only published it in North America.

Shin Megami Tensei IV devs answer questions during a 2 day event:

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/04/27/shin-megami-tensei-iv-developers-answer-fan-questions/

Shin Megami Tensei IV devs answer questions during a 2 day event:

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/04/27/shin-megami-tensei-iv-developers-answer-fan-questions/

1 post for each day! :p

Gah? How did I manage that nonsense, I wasn't even posting on a phone or anything

Sweet, this just got release-date delivery from Amazon.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Sweet, this just got release-date delivery from Amazon.

Make sure you switch to two-day shipping if you were on one-day before. Both will arrive July 16th now, but one still costs $3 more New orders can't even select one-day shipping, but for existing orders you have to go back and select two-day to get the cheapest release day delivery.

Edit: Or at least I did. It sounds like a bug, maybe it won't have happened to everyone.

I'm a Prime subscriber, so I never do anything except 2-day since it's free in all cases. It does ring a bell that orders with next-day shipping need to go back and change it, I think Amazon only upgrades existing 2-day orders.

Oh, hello. English website update! http://www.atlus.com/smt4/home.html

2nd English trailer, showing some field movement, battles, and dialogue.

So the second round of DLC quests has hit SMT IV in Japan, and they're both designed to let players earn macca and app points (upgrades for your computer interface) at a significantly higher rate than the main game. Atlus has said that they were DLC packs intended for "busy people with limited time to play the game".

How do you all feel about that? It doesn't bother me as it's an optional one-time purchase. But it touches on some concerns about monetization of RPGs and systems where you're forced to grind or pay the developers money. I'm quite certain that if this were a Mass Effect game and not a Shin Megami Tensei one that the internet would be on fire.

And let's all take a moment to imagine the frothing post Lard would have written in response to this.

Fare thee well, Lard, wherever you may be.

I'm pretty torn on the whole thing. Different things appeal to different people and I love the idea of being able to tailor the game to what you enjoy. I believe ME3 had a story mode that does that (right?). So if someone wants to pay to make the game go faster because they don't enjoy those aspects of the game as much as, say, the story, that's fine by me.

But then I wonder why they have to pay and why it's not just a gameplay mode.

But then I wonder why I have a problem with charging for a feature the potential customers will consider worthwhile. Monetization, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.

There's also the cynical interpretation that they make the game grindy to encourage you to pay. I honestly don't believe that's the case here or in the majority of other similar games. I think the designers almost always build that kind of thing as a perk to potentially enjoy the game even more, not as a way to end the torture.

Like I said...torn.