After years and years of clamouring, JRPG fans have finally gotten their wish: the Persona games are finally breaking out of PlayStation exclusivity, and are coming to Xbox and PC.
At the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase earlier this week, Atlus announced that three of the most popular games in the franchise: Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royale, will all be making their debut on Xbox and PC Game Pass at some point in the future. The first of these will be Persona 5 Royale, which will launch on 21 October 2022.
A release date for the other 2 games will be announced at a later date, though it is worth noting that Persona 4 Golden was already available on Steam since 2020.
Prior to P4G’s release on Steam, the Persona series has largely been exclusive to Sony’s consoles. 2006’s Persona 3 Portable was only available on the PlayStation Portable; Persona 4 Golden was launched exclusively on the PS Vita on 2012; and Persona 5 and its definitive Royale version were released only on the PS4 and PS5 in 2016 and 2019 respectively.
This then raises the question of whether future Persona games will no longer be PlayStation exclusives. Only time will tell, perhaps.
For the uninitiated, the Persona franchise is a supernatural JRPG series set in modern Japan. You play as a party of students who are able to conjure powerful spirits, or Personas, in an alternate reality to do battle with evil spirits in order to restore balance to the real world. Outside of combat, you control the main character as they live their day-to-day life studying, performing extra-curricular activities or socialising with other party members or NPCs in order to raise their Social Links, and in turn level up Personas.
Though the release dates of the other two Persona titles have yet to be announced, it’s probably safe to assume that they will be released sometime in 2023, according to Xbox’s own announcement.
If anything, that’s a boon, since P5R will take you at least 80 hours to complete, from personal experience.
