Make no mistake, Atlus has certainly made a name for itself by developing well-known titles such as the Persona and Trauma Center series. Of course, getting your hands on an Atlus game is a feat in of itself; after initial sales, the games seem to mysteriously vanish from the shelves and remain extremely hard to find. Is this some sort of nefarious scheme at creating false demand? According to Atlus, certainly not.
Responding to a comment left at the PlayStation Blog, Atlus PR & Sales Manager Aram Jabbari explains that the scarceness of Atlus games is simply market play.
"As a smaller publisher, we usually don’t manufacture much surplus inventory, but we will never intentionally undersupply the market. We build to launch demand, which is most often dictated by pre-order trends, so if you’d like to make sure you can easily snag a copy (and of course, we understand there are always plenty of games to choose from and that it’s not always as easy to pick up day one), it usually helps to pre-order.
That tells the retailers there is demand for the title, and it better educates what we produce."
Apart from having the coolest-sounding name this side of Dune, Jabbari appears to re-iterate standard gaming law that deals with purchases; do your research, pre-order early and hope for the best. With the recent success of Demon’s Souls for the PS3, Atlus should look at bolstering its production numbers for an increasingly receptive audience.
