Yesterday, Atlus announced Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal would be coming to Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X during Microsoft’s Not E3 showcase. While the presentation naturally only mentioned Microsoft systems and stores, it turns out, all three of these games are also coming to PlayStation and Steam, as well.
Atlus has confirmed as much in a press release (thanks GamesRadar+), which states all three JRPGs will be coming out on PlayStation (P3P and P4G on PS4, P5R will be getting a native PS5 version), which seemed like a wild omission to me yesterday, given that’s where this series began 25 years ago. This is something we often run into when games are announced a console-specific showcase. PlayStation doesn’t bring up Microsoft, Microsoft doesn’t bring up PlayStation, and we usually find out information about competing consoles from the third-party company making the game. But even Atlus’ own social channels weren’t mentioning PlayStation and Steam after the show, so there was a window where it seemed like these ports wouldn’t be coming to PlayStation.
This probably means Atlus and Microsoft had made some kind of deal for the company to sit on that information longer than they usually would to try and cultivate a greater association between this announcement and Xbox/Windows as a brand. Even Atlus’ current social media banner only notes Xbox and Windows as of this writing.
You never saw it coming!
Persona 5 Royal, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 3 Portable are coming to Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC!
Persona 5 Royal releases October 21, 2021! #P25th pic.twitter.com/XMHsX26yrG
— Official ATLUS West (@Atlus_West) June 12, 2022
Whatever the reasoning, PlayStation users can at least rest easy knowing the definitive version of each JRPG will be heading to PlayStation consoles. Persona 5 Royal has been playable on PS5 through backwards compatibility, but will now have a native version on the system. The real question is how the hell are these not also coming to Switch?
I love all three of these games, but I’m most interested to see Persona 3 Portable make the jump from PSP to HD consoles/PC. I imagine that game will need the most touch-ups in the porting process. And hopefully modders get their hands on it and do the queer community a favor by making romances available to everyone regardless of which gender character they’re playing.
