f13.net

So, why is it that Atlus seems to vary so wildly in quality? From Persona and the SMT games being the best of the best JRPG-wise to the last few 360 releases being not only piss-poor games, but games that seem rushed.

Atlus is both a developer and a publisher, so you're getting some great games from one group of devs and some others that were made by entirely different people. Persona/SMT were developed by Atlus; other stuff like Etrian Odyssey, Operation Darkness, etc., are just published by them.

So, what you're saying is they need to be more choosy about what 3rd party games they accept? And I need to check if upcoming games like Eternal Poison are inhouse or not? Makes sense.

I believe they developed Etrian Odyssey, as seen here (http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/atlus-co-ltd/developed-by/list-games/).  What 360 games are you talking about?

Atlus is in a tough position. Bigger and bigger publishers are bringer over nichier shit. Nichier? It's a word now. More niche. Whatever.

Anyway, Atlus picked up some Idea Factory stuff that NISA no doubt passed on. In fact, shortly after Atlus made those announcements the head of NISA went on saying that while they like Idea Factory, they weren't publishing their under par shit anymore. Good for them.

Atlus needs to stick with Banpresto (Summon Night) and Sting (Yggdra Union, etc). Eternal Poison is from Banpresto and it would be good if the game had been optimized before release. Unfortunately, load times will fucking kill it. Etrian Odyssey is indeed an Atlus game. Anyway, this landscape is rough on small Japanese devs which is NISA and Atlus' bread 'n butter.

In fact, it's downright horrible. So horrible in fact that neither company has made any real inroads into the PS3 - except a little bit of NISA has because N1 is totally dedicated to the machine and the Xbox 360 is made by big roundeye white men. As it stands, Atlus needs to up the quality of their home console releases or their fucked. And Atlus Japan needs to make some hard decisions on what it wants to do, because right now - despite the fact SMT is supposed to go PS3 - they're still floundering around with the PS2.

In other parts of the development scene, D3Publisher seems pretty set on the 360 (whatwith the recent Oneechanbara Vortex finally being revealed and their previous releases pointing at that) and XSeed will publish whatever the fuck is handed to them. I'm hoping Harvest Moon goes next-gen soon and I imagine Natsume would release it on the PS3 given their mindset is much like N1s.

Did I miss anything? Any other Devs you want info on?

In short: Idea Factory is poison and Atlus should've known better. And Poison Pink shouldn't have gotten a rename.

I'm shocked as hell that this is being localized for the US.

Well, they tried to get the previous one for the PS2 brought over, but it just wasn't in the cards. Microsoft will accept anything that'll draw in the weaboo crowd though.

Sorry, this is correct, I made the mistake of assuming the "Games developed by..." and "Games published by..." lists on wikipedia had no overlap.

That'd certainly explain the Spectral Force release and upcoming non-FF Squeenix stuff, but I can't hold much against the purveyors of EDF2017.