When we think of Sega, its Japanese games come to mind of course, like Sonic, Yakuza, etc. But I never really see people talking much about their European studios, namely: Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive, Relic Entertainment, Amplitude Studios and Two Point Studios. (Hardlight doesn't count because everyone knows them because of Sonic) Which is a shame, since they make great titles that goes unnoticed by the larger Sega community. So yeah, what I'm trying to say is that Sega's European studios need more attention from the wider Sega community in my opinion.
I'm sure others may feel differently, but when I think of Sega, I'm thinking first party and excluding all of the various independent publishers and developers which they've bought over the years and brought under the Sega publishing umbrella. If I think of a Relic Entertainment or Atlus game or what have you, I think of them as Relic or Atlus games, not Sega games, even if Sega is the publisher. That applies to pretty much all games across the board from any publisher. It's the developer who I give the credit to in my mind, not the publisher.
This is pretty much how it is from my experience. People talk about Relic all the time, for example, but never utter Sega's name. The only one this is kinda not applied to is Atlus for some reason. People know Sega owns them and acknowledge that completely, with some people these days saying Sega instead of Atlus, with others just saying Atlus while acknowledging Sega. I think the Atlus thing is only happening because both are Japanese though.
I still treat Atlus as a separate entity in my mind (as does Sega - the two are still distinct at events), because it's very alien to me - it's an empire built on games I couldn't buy for systems I didn't own - I let others take the lead on that subject. With the European studios, the "Sega Europe" brand is front and centre, but it's similar to Eidos back in the day - you absolutely knew Eidos was the publisher of Tomb Raider, but it was a Core Design game, and they'd get all the credit (or in later years, all the complaints). There's an obvious distinction in the Sega sphere between developer and publisher in Europe, which is less of a case in the US or Japan. As such, communities for those games gravitate elsewhere - those franchises have a history before Sega, after all. So in a sense it's understandable - if you don't feel like you're playing a Sega game, you're less likely to turn on this part of the internet. But at some point Sega Retro will eat all your half-baked Fandom wikis and then we'll have enough battle power to finally defeat Freiza.
I think it's as much to do with these studios' own output and differing tastes as the fact that there are obvious brand distinctions made between them - for the most part, none of them make what most people have historically always liked Sega for (i.e. arcadey stuff, RPGs, etc). It's certainly part of why there isn't much overlap between, say, PSO2 and Humankind players. For convenient comparison, Sega have made RTS and sports simulation games themselves for many years in the form of WCCF and Sangokushi Taisen, mirroring Creative Assembly and Sports Interactive's own mainstay franchises. Leaving aside how they have rarely ever left Japan's arcades, you don't see dedicated fans or much appreciation for those among Sega people either.
I guess it depends on their age/what games they're familiar with. Atlus has been around since the Famicom, but I don't remember noticing their existence till the PlayStation. Still, I owned a bunch of Atlus games on the PS1 and PS2 (and DS and Vita) long before Sega acquired them in 2013. In fact, I've never actually played an Atlus game released by Sega. So for me, Atlus will always be just Atlus (especially when a lot of the stuff being published by Sega is sequels to pre-Sega series.)
They're reviewed well, and sell well. Hard to get behind it just because Sega bought it. Not going to start randomly liking Gex if Sega bought the IP.
The only Atlus game I've known (or at least the only one I know it belonged to them) was a fighting game in 90's arcades, and not a very spectacular one compared to what was around. I'm still surprised when you talk about them as a successful studio 25 years or so after that.
I can't speak for Europe, as I'm not sure what games were marketed or popular there, but in the USA at least, Atlus (along with Nippon Ichi Software) has always been thought of as sort of a "indie Squaresoft" or "Squaresoft for the cool kids." As in, a publisher of less-mainstream JRPGs that got by on their own merits rather than riding the coattails of the Final Fantasy brand. In Japan of course, they're far more successful and mainstream. The Megami Tensei/Persona media franchise alone is enough to make them a household name amongst Japanese gamers.
