Persona 4
Persona 4 is a role-playing video game developed and published by Atlus for Sony's PlayStation 2, and chronologically the fifth installment in the "Persona" series, itself a part of the larger "Megami Tensei" franchise. The game was released in Japan in July 2008, North America in December 2008, and Europe in March 2009. "Persona 4" takes place in a fictional Japanese countryside and is indirectly related to earlier "Persona" games. The player-named protagonist is a high-school student who moved into the countryside from the city for a year. During his year-long stay, he becomes involved in investigating mysterious murders while harnessing the power of summoning Persona. The game features a weather forecast system with events happening on foggy days to replace the moon phase system implemented in the previous games.
Persona (series)
Due to the company not having a European branch, Atlus has generally given publishing duties to other third-party publishers with branches in Europe. This frequently results in a gap between North American and European release dates ranging from a few months to a year or more. For "Persona 3", Atlus gave publishing duties to Koei. For "Persona 4", European publishing was handled by Square Enix. "Persona 4 Arena" was originally published in Europe by Zen United after a long delay, but the digital rights were eventually returned to Atlus, resulting in the game being removed from PSN. Atlus ended up re-publishing the digital PlayStation version in Europe. They had previously digitally published the PSP port of "Persona" in Europe and Australia. "Arena Ultimax" was published in Europe by Sega, who had recently purchased Atlus' parent company. It was speculated that this could lead to a new trend that would shorten the release gap between North America and Europe. A regular publishing partner was Ghostlight, whose relations with Atlus went back to the European release of "Nocturne". A more recent partner was NIS America, which published "Persona 4 Golden", "Persona Q", and "Dancing All Night". Atlus' partnership with NIS America ended in 2016, with NIS America citing difficulties with the company since its acquisition by Sega as reasons for the split. As part of their statement, NIS America said that Atlus had become "very picky" about European partners, selecting those which could offer the highest minimal sales guarantee on their products. Sega of America and Atlus USA eventually entered into a partnership with European publishing company Deep Silver to publish multiple games in the region, including "Persona 5".