Neronium said:
It's more in this case because it is Atlus. I mean if Nintendo were to buy them what would happen to Persona 5 seeing as no Persona game has ever been made for a Nintendo console, and if Sony were to buy it then what would happen to Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem. If one company or the other were to purchase Atlus then they'd effectively be alienating the fan base and splitting them causing hatred. The best outcome that could happen would be if Atlus were to self-publish or were bought by NIS, which also raises the question about Disgaea because there has only ever been 1 Disgaea game on a Nintendo system and that was a remake of the first one on the DS. What would happen to the new Disgaea game being made for the PS3? Really it'd be bad for either company to purchase it. We need to hope that NIS could take the hit and purchase the company because really it'd be a step back to go from 3rd party and make stuff for everything, to going to 1st party and only being exclusive.
While I can see your logic, are Nippon Ichi Software a big enough company to just out and out buy Atlus? I always thought NIS were a company who managed to stay profitable by being very sensible with smaller projects. Similar to XSEED, say. I'm going through their games list now, and I can't see anything that would be classed as a runaway 'AAA' success. I can't say I could see them not only splashing out the cash to buy Atlus, but to then keep supporting their development team with money as well. Not unless they brokered some sort of deal with a larger conglomerate or something.
It's not just the asking price of Atlus which is the thing here. It's the fact that whoever buys them, they're going to need to keep pumping money into Atlus in order to keep their developers working on something. Sadly, there aren't many companies within the gaming industry outside of Sony or Nintendo who have the money to do that. Square Enix are currently going through financial hell (and personally, I think it would be better to keep the SMT franchise separate from FF). Capcom and Namco aren't looking to expand as far as I'm aware. I can't see Activision or Ubisoft being interested in a somewhat niche Japanese developer-publisher, and EA currently doesn't have the cash (as far as I'm aware) to keep buying up more studios.
From where I see it, the only real option outside Sony or Nintendo is some kind of media conglomerate. That could perhaps work better. Media conglomerates often remain very hands off regarding developers they purchase. Index may have been corrupt bastards, but they seem to have allowed Atlus to just do their own thing. It may be worth hoping that some other large conglomerate has been keeping abreast of the situation, and decides to step in themselves. That would keep Atlus third party, and hopefully give them free reign over their own games. The only problem, of course, is that if that conglomerate starts losing money, we end up in exactly the same situation again.
We shall see...
