The Xbox & Bethesda Showcase 2022 event had a huge announcement for fans of JRPGs, as the Persona series is coming to Xbox and Windows, with Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal all arriving on Xbox Game Pass in the future. The Persona series has been notorious for its lack of ports, with games doggedly sticking to Nintendo or Sony systems, despite Sega claiming Atlus games will be multi-platform in the future.
The Xbox line of systems has a number of JRPGs on Xbox Game Pass, with Square Enix being huge supporters of the service, bringing games from the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series to the system. As a whole, Japanese developers seem reticent to bring JRPGs to Xbox systems, outside of the biggest franchises. The games developed by Atlus have been even stricter, with the company tending to keep its Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games on one line of systems. This has started to change in recent times, as Persona 4 Golden was a hit on Steam, and Atlus has repeatedly asked fans if they want more multi-platform releases in surveys.
One of the biggest surprises of the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase 2022 event was that Atlus was going all-in on support for Xbox systems, as Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal are all coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and the Windows Store in the future. All of the games will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on day one, with Persona 5 Royal launching first, coming to the service on October 21, 2022. The trailer for the Persona games on Xbox Game Pass can be seen on the official Xbox YouTube channel.
This announcement is notable for a few reasons. The three updated versions of the most famous Persona games are coming to Xbox systems, even though they aren’t even available on Nintendo systems. It turned out that the Persona 3 Portable remaster rumors were true. This marks the first console release for Persona 3 Portable, which was originally released for the PSP, though it could technically be played on a PlayStation TV. Persona 4 Golden was also stuck on the PS Vita for a long time, though it has since been released on Steam. It’s surprising that Persona 5 Royal is coming to Xbox before Nintendo Switch, as Joker was a DLC character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, leading many fans to speculate that a port was on the way.
The Xbox Game Pass JRPG line-up has just been boosted considerably by this announcement at the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase 2022 event. This trilogy of Persona games is among the finest JRPGs ever made, offering hundreds of hours of entertainment across all three titles. The event was a great advertisement for Xbox Game Pass, with most of the announcements promising a day one release for subscribers, and the reveal of the Persona games coming to the service was among the highlights of the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase 2022 event.
Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz. A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.
source: Screen Rant