Atlus to cut development following losses

Japanese publisher Atlus has announced that it is to refocus on the arcade market and re-evaluate its game development following a disappointing loss in its full year results.

Atlus recorded a loss of 180 million Yen (â'¬1.4 million) for the full year, on sales of some 17 billion Yen (â'¬133 million), mostly due to a 25 per cent drop in console game sales. Its results in the arcade game sector, however, outperformed expectations significantly.

As such the publisher hopes to slash its development costs in the console game sector, and will focus increasingly on arcade games - a sector which it had moved away from in recent years.

The company is best known for RPG efforts including critically acclaimed PS2 title Disgaea and one of the Xbox' biggest hopes in the Japanese RPG market, Shin Megami Tensei 9 (the online version of which was recently moved to the PC on the basis of the continued poor performance of Xbox in Japan).