Primary Auction for Atlus Officially Confirmed, Index Announces that “Several Candidates” Have Been Selected

Giuseppe Nelva August 6, 2013 5:01 AM EST

Index Corporation (Atlus’ mother company) just officially announced with a press release that the primary auction for the acquisition of the company’s assets (including Atlus), that until now was only rumored, has indeed been conducted.

According to Index, a “large number” of companies took part in the bidding process and “several candidates” for the transfer of business have been selected. The publisher also announced that a second auction between the chosen candidates will be held in the future in order to define a final buyer as soon as possible.

Atlus is on sale because Index Corporation filed for Civil Rehabilitation (the Japanese equivalent of a soft Bankruptcy) after finding itself in debt by 24.5 billion yen (almost 246 million dollars). In the meanwhile the studio reassured customers that business will continue as usual and future releases won’t be affected.

A previous report by Bloomberg Japan, based on the usual “Executives familiar with the situation” alleged that the highest bids amounted to about 20 billion yen (201 million dollars), and that Sega Sammy Holdings was one of the parties that took part in the primary bidding process.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) no names of potential candidates were mentioned as part of this press release and no details about the amount of the bids were given.