Atlus Free to Revitalise Dormant Sega Franchises

Naoya Tsurumi, chief operating officer for Sega Sammy, announced in a recent interview with Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu that Atlus is free to develop updates for dormant Sega franchises should it choose to.

Sega acquired Atlus’ parent company Index Corporation earlier in the year, Tsurumi stated in the interview that he hopes the acquisition will strengthen Sega’s presence in the RPG market:

“I believe that the addition of genres is a crucial factor. Especially with regard to the fact that Sega have never excelled in RPG titles. With consideration towards Atlus’ strengths, Japanese RPGs would be a prime example.”

He later discussed how Atlus has permission to update dormant Sega properties of their choosing. The key word there is “dormant”, so don’t expect an Atlus developed Sonic the Hedgehog game where the gang teams up to kill Satan any time soon, but there are interesting titles in that pool including Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5:

“While we have no intention of forcing this, we’d definitely love to have them utilize any of Sega’s dormant IPs.”

Atlus is currently scheduled to release Persona 5 in 2014 on Playstation 3.