Atlus won’t lose its “human touch” nor stop taking risks even if their scale of development grows larger, says Persona series producer 

At the CEDEC+KYUSHU 2024 developers’ conference held in Japan on November 23, 2024, Persona series creative producer Kazuhisa Wada made a presentation on various aspects of the franchise, including how Atlus plans to continue making Persona games amidst the changing landscape of game development (as reported by Game Makers). 

In the section of his lecture devoted to “The Future of Persona,” Wada mentions that Atlus is going through changes in its development infrastructure, much like the rest of the industry. The growing scale of development is causing production costs to rise and lengthening cycles between projects. Future Persona titles “will be confronted with these new difficulties in the development environment,” Wada commented. 

When developers with a distinct flavor and devoted cult following like Atlus grow in scale, fans’ biggest nightmare is that the games will lose their edge and start to feel safe and mass-produced. However, it seems Atlus is taking steps to prevent this from happening. 

“Even if we grow in scale, we need to keep making entertainment that maintains a human touch all the way through,” Wada comments. To this end, Atlus is currently in the process of transitioning from a top-down to a bottom-up organization. In other words, they are trying to make sure that no matter how big they get, their teams will work autonomously and creatively, with each individual staff member sharing Atlus’ creative vision and being equally invested in what they’re making. 

Wada comments that the transition to a bottom-up organization itself should not be difficult, based on his experience, but the real challenge will be balancing the organization’s functionality while delivering high quality. 

Aside from the organizational changes, Persona’s creative producer also mentions that when developers grow in scale, they can lose the ability to take on risks. However, Wada states that Atlus intends to continue to take on new challenges even as it scales up development.