The recent success of the Yakuza games has presented a major shift in Sega's approach to major game releases going forward. Nowhere is this clearer than in how the company is handling the release of Lost Judgment, which will be the first simultaneous worldwide launch in the series, while also arriving on multiple platforms and launching with an English dub. Now, it appears Sega is preparing to give Atlus' upcoming titles the same treatment, starting with Shin Megami Tensei 5.

For the longest time, fans have had to wait years for developer/publisher Atlus' games to release outside of Japan. This has been a result between the split in development and localization resources for both Sega and Atlus, with localization coming after a lot of the work on the Japanese versions of games like Persona and Shin Megami Tensei are done. This, coupled with the English dubs that are usually created for the games, cause the western localization teams to require more time to bring these games to the west, as we recently saw with Persona 5 Strikers, which took a full year to release outside of Japan.

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As announced last year, Sega and Atlus are planning to change things with the upcoming release of Shin Megami Tensei 5, which is planned to release simultaneously globally later this year. This is a first for any of Atlus' major RPG franchises and, until Lost Judgment's reveal, something unheard of for Sega as a whole. In an interview with Famitsu (via Persona Central,) Sega's Chief Strategy Officer Shuji Utsumi claimed that "A simultaneous release on multiple platforms would be favorable for our titles. Of course, we’ll make adjustments on a per title basis, but we want to be conscious of the global expansion of Atlus titles as well."

This decision comes after the global success of Yakuza: Like a Dragon which, despite releasing in Japan in January 2020, was met with major success upon its worldwide release in November 2020, being the first entry in the series to launch on multiple platforms upon its release. While Utsumi's claim is likely in regard to Sega attempting to speed up the process in which games like Persona 5 (which took seven months to release outside of Japan) are localized, he could also be hinting towards the publisher's future plans to bring Atlus' games to other platforms.

Atlus has recently begun bringing its games to Steam, starting with Catherine Classic in January 2019 and fully committing in June 2020 with the highly successful release of Persona 4 Golden. This then prompted the publisher to bring Persona 5 Strikers to PC on its western release date earlier this year, and Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD Remaster is also planned to launch on Steam later this month. This global expansion could mean bigger things for Atlus' commitment to PC, including bringing previously released titles to the platform.

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Source: Persona Central