I've said it before, but I'll say it again: God bless the gang at Atlus. While some companies would get all up in arms about the ESRB leaking unreleased information on their website, effectively taking the thunder away from marketing departments, Atlus is taking the road of most hilarity.
In a press release today, Atlus has revealed that all future announcements regarding its games will be made directly through the ESRB website. Claiming that the major distribution channels are positively flooded with content from other publishers, Atlus claims that the silent posting of facts about their games has been an "experiment" and "a rousing success" at that.
Their complete, tongue-in-cheek release follows the jump. Keep staying classy, Atlus. You know how much we love you for this stuff.
IRVINE, CALIFORNIA — DECEMBER 4, 2008 — Atlus U.S.A., Inc. today turned gaming PR on its head with the news that all future Atlus game announcements will be revealed first on the ESRB website.
"Our experiment has been a rousing success," said Aram Jabbari, Manager of PR and Sales, beaming. "Allowing information about our upcoming titles to be silently posted on ESRB's website has been a triumph, and we've decided to abandon all direct, overt disclosures of our future games in favor of quietly allowing the posting of new titles onto ESRB.org. Every other publisher puts their press releases out there in the same distribution channel, and sometimes the news gets overlooked. By sneaking all future game announcements onto the ESRB website for just a handful of passionate editors to find, we distance ourselves from industry conventions."
Atlus will start this groundbreaking game launch tactic in 2009, and hopes to continue the practice as long as it remains effective.
"We're sure we'll have everyone doing this at some point, following in our footsteps. And maybe at some point it will force us to change direction. But in the mean time, we really feel that indirectly leaking all future game announcements and hoping a few people stumble upon them and tell everyone they know is the best way to go at this juncture."
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About Atlus U.S.A., Inc.
Located in Irvine, California and founded in 1991, Atlus U.S.A., Inc. is renowned for its proud tradition of publishing exceptional role-playing games with strong niche appeal. The Atlus library of critically acclaimed video games includes Odin Sphere, Trauma Center series, and the award-winning Shin Megami Tensei series. For more information, visit http://www.atlus.com.
For breaking news, special promotions, insider info, and more, visit http://www.atlus.com/faithful to join the ranks of the Atlus Faithful!
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6:00 PM on 12.05.2008
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It's like an Onion article except I feel good about the state of the world after reading it.
I always imagined the video game industry as a high school. Some of them are funny guys, some of them are assholes.
Unfortunately, I don't think the ESRB are that humorous.