RF Generation Message Board

http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/18958/20130719/atlus-bankruptcy-nintendo-persona-5-acquisition.htm

Just what would this do for the company as a whole?

It'd give Nintendo a strong, hardcore developer to help shore up their 1st party titles, but it still doesn't give Nintendo any strength to their 3rd party development and would likely prevent Atlus from releasing on consoles besides Nintendo.

...not a fan, since I want to see Atlus stay 3rd party and release for all consoles.

I agree with Shadow. I'd be happy if Atlus survived in general but I like them publishing on as many platforms as possible.

Sony would be terrible for Atlus. They like always unless Wesrern and AAA break 1st party up and when they owned part of Square treated them horribly. Marvelous and Gungho be the best fit for Atlus. Nintendo would be a good one as well as JRPG devs get lot's of incentives from them and treated very well. Brownie Brown and Monolith former Square talent been doing great with them.

I'd be a big fan of an Atlus/Nintendo combo.

nintendo needs all the help they can get, and the sort of niche market games that Atlus usually makes would give nintendo some more character. i'd be fine with this.

If Atlus became a 2nd party/psuedo internal developer I'd be interested, but I wouldn't want Nintendo to have direct control. They could certainly be a strength if they are left to their own devices.

ya that's what i was thinking, i would be happy with Atlus on the Wii U/3DS like Rare was on the N64.

This could be an interesting developer relationship. I don't know if this would actually happen; Nintendo seems happy to be doing what they're doing. But I could be wrong because I haven't been following what these two companies are up to lately.

i looked into it and it sounds like Monolith Soft is already a nintendo second party developer like rare was, so i could see them adding atlus in a similar deal.

Sony and Atlus have so many great games together, I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

I honestly I have no heard of Atlus, but I'm not that big into knowing all of the development companies and what not. I'll have to look them up. I'm all for an alliance to help Nintendo out

First off, I'd take this article with a grain of salt, since they almost outright state that Nintendo wants to buy them; I think that's sensationalist journalism just to get hits. I highly doubt Nintendo wants to buy Atlus; it's not like a niche publisher like that would sell the Wii U or the 3DS, even as popular as Atlus is. They may express interest in acquiring Atlus, but at the price point that Atlus of Japan is expected to sell at, Nintendo would likely take a pass unless they could get Atlus on the cheap.

Of course, if Atlus of Japan folds, it does put the SMT x Fire Emblem project in jeopardy.

Best-case scenario I see is if another niche publisher merges with Atlus and helps with distribution rights (especially in Europe, since Atlus has no presence there), and Atlus stays third-party as usual. Gungho (which I think has Acquire and Grasshopper under their belt) or Marvelous Entertainment (which is in bed with XSeed) would be the best fit for Atlus, but they may not have the capital to afford Atlus. Nippon Ichi is also a possibility, considering the two companies have a good working relationship with each other, but NIS has been struggling as of late (especially now that they've lost the Atelier series' publishing rights to Tecmo Koei). I highly doubt Sony cares about Atlus at this point; they didn't exactly treat Atlus well regarding the current gen, and Atlus doesn't sell enough units to make it worth their while. I can't see Microsoft or any of the bigger western publishers expressing interest at all, and a Squeenix, Capcom, Konami, or Bamco merger would likely be disasterous, since they'd likely get kicked to the curb like Microsoft's done with Rare these days.

But this is all speculation at best until a deal gets done (or not), which likely will happen around September, hopefully before TGS so Atlus of Japan can focus on that. Otherwise, I'm not touting any gloom-and-doom scenarios until then. :-\