During the NIS America streaming event earlier today, the company announced that it was teaming up with SEGA/Atlus to distribute a multitude of games throughout North America. This doesn’t mean that SEGA/Atlus is publishing them, NIS America is still the publisher on the box but SEGA is the distributor. What does that mean? I have no clue. Is this SEGA and NIS America team up to make it easier to distribute these titles to more mainstream shops?
SEGA is listed as distributing the following titles part of their SEGA and NIS America team up:
- Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (PS4, PSvita)
- Cladun Returns: This Is Sengoku! (PS4)
- The Silver Case (PS4)
- Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle (PS4)
- Tokyo Tattoo Girls (PSvita)
- Culdcept Revolt (3DS)
- RPG Maker FES (3DS)
- Disgaea 5 Complete (Switch)
- Redout (Switch) (Nicalis published)
That’s quite the number of titles. What are your thoughts on SEGA and NIS America team up? I personally love it, I have always wanted SEGA to push more Japanese skewed titles over here and this is a good start. With SEGA already buying Atlus, would you guys freak out of they also picked up NIS America?
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I’m glad about this type of connection between SEGA and NIS, a situation that, in Japan, a few years ago regularly happened toward many developers and small publishers, but what I really love is the relationship with Nicalis the (Switch) publisher of Redout, for me a tremendous game, of a quality almost mesmerizing for an arcade racing title, result of the development of the italian indie studio 34BigThings.
Atlus has always distributed NIS America titles
Like Trippled said, Atlus has always been distributing games from other companies in the US. They handle distribution for Idea Factory games as well. It’s a task that was handed over to SEGA of America when they took over distributing from Atlus (but realistically, that was a change in name only). SEGA/Atlus doesn’t exactly bring this kind of thing in the news, and there’s probably a reason for that if you look at some of the titles being distributed. For example, it even includes Criminal Girls 2, and that’s not the kind of game one would associate with the SEGA brand, or even Atlus. They’re bringing over Idea Factory’s Mary Skelter as well.
So this seems to be business as usual, and there’s no indication that this would point to a takeover. Which might be for the best.
What about Europe and deepsilver?
Does this mean that they are going for one distribution worldwideinstead of Nis usa regio and eu region deepsilver.
Too bad the article didn’t say anything about how long the two companies will work together. I sincerely freak out if sega will buy Nis America because now sega will hold big portfolio if it comes to RPG’S and the big three company’s can learn a thing or two about it one and other.
That be cool if sega bought NIS they’ll have Atlus handle the games and I hope they come out for nintendo switch or even the new xbox system, I remember when I bought part 1 when it came out on the sega master system that and Phantasy Star 1, the hours just playing both Wow!
So what is the difference between publishing and distribution? I thought distribution would be the duty of the publisher.
Distributing them I assume is in simply shipping them over for localisation?
If Sega and Atlus are only distributing them, don’t they make any profit from it seeing as they aren’t going to be publishing them?
A distributor takes the finished game and gets it into the stores. They’re not involved in the actual creation of the game, unlike a publisher which typically does invest money into the development of the game. It’s true that publishers usually also distribute a game, but that’s not always the case. As for profits: it’s of course their intention make a profit of it, otherwise they wouldn’t bother with it. From what I understand, distributors in fact purchase the games from the publisher, and then sell and distribute them to stores. So there’s likely a margin there between what they pay for the game, and what the stores pay.
Holy crap “Tokyo Tattoo Girls” is getting localized?
To me, SEGA is kinda similar to Disney. So NIS would be like SEGA’s Lucasfilm and Atlus is SEGA’s Marvel. Do you know what I mean?
Yes