It was announced last week that Deep Silver will begin publishing Sega-brand and Atlus games in Europe, which will include Persona 5 and more. Sega explained the situation in more detail in a recent blog post.
Here’s what Sega had to say in regards to their titles coming to Europe:
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.”
