Atlus parent company Index Corporation being restructured within SEGA

Video games news website Siliconera posted up an interesting article yesterday concerning the relationship between SEGA and the parent company of Atlus, Index Corporation.

You may remember SEGA Nerds reporting that SEGA Sammy Holdings purchased Index Corporation back in September. The bid was confirmed at 14 billion yen and was no doubt one of the largest purchases SEGA has made in recent years, if not throughout their lifetime.

Initially this caused some concern among Atlus fans as the future of the company was now becoming a little unclear. Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka was quick to apologize to customers, thanking them for their dedication and reassuring them that there are still plenty of high quality titles in the works.

Now, this takes us to yesterdays interesting article: “Who’s in charge of Atlus now that SEGA owns it?” Here is a direct quotation from Siliconera’s post:

The more important question is who is in charge of Index Corporation now that it’s integrated into Sega? Sega Sammy Chief Operating Officer Naoya Tsurumi is now the president of Index Corporation and Yasuhiko Hamada is the Executive Vice President.

Yukimasa Murakami, the Managing Director of Index Corporation before the acquisition, is still the managing director of the new Index Corporation.

Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi, Sega game director Yukio Sugino, and Atlus USA president Naoto Hiraoka are on the company’s board.

So what does this mean? Rest easy Atlus fans, for it’s nothing to worry about.

SEGA may have purchased the company but they have retained all Index and Atlus’ major executives, merging the company with their own. Yukimasa Murakami has been director of Index Holdings since 2007 and he still remains in this role today.

Atlus USA president Naoto Hiroka is sitting nicely on the companies board of directors and he is joined by two of SEGA’s own; Yukio Sugino (executive manager and supervisor of many SEGA developed titles) and Toshihiro Nagoshi (of Daytona, Super Monkey Ball and Yakuza fame.)

SEGA is a smart company and the demand for Atlus products, both in Japan and the west will not have gone unnoticed. The future of the relationship between both companies looks to be an interesting one and it seems clear that Index Corporation has been given a warm welcome to the SEGA family.

[Via Siliconera]