Finally.
After years of speculation, Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal are
finally coming to the Nintendo Switch.
Fans had seen this coming, as the games have also recently been announced for modern PC,
Playstation, and Xbox platforms.
While Persona 5 Royal’s inclusion on the Switch may be the big news of the day, the
fact that Persona 3 Portable is finally no longer trapped on the PSP is fantastic news
for fans of the game.
So why have developer Atlus and publisher SEGA decided to dump these three iconic Persona
games on as many platforms as possible, including the Nintendo Switch?
Atlus has known for years that Nintendo Switch owners are desperate to play Persona games.
When asked about Persona 5 on Switch in an interview in 2020, Atlus brand manager Naoto
Hiraoka said: “We don’t have a specific answer to give
for that question, but I personally think that the Nintendo Switch is a very attractive
platform.”
On the subject of Persona 3 and 4 remasters, he said:
“Although we can’t specifically tell you anything at the moment, we have always received
a lot of suggestions from the players.
We have received and understood the voices of the players, and if there is an opportunity,
we will actively discuss it.”
In spite of an awareness of the desire for Persona ports, decision-makers at Atlus have
been very hesitant to bring these games to new platforms.
Not only did they want to ensure that the demand was there to justify re-releases, they
also wanted to make sure that they could deliver high quality ports that would do justice to
their games.
Behind the scenes, publisher SEGA has been pushing for years to convince Atlus to release
Persona games more widely.
Considering Atlus’ hesitancy, moves towards these ports have been slow.
First, Atlus was convinced to allow a port of Catherine, a Persona-adjacent game that
originally released on the Xbox 360.
According to SEGA representative John Clark, the success of this re-release led to discussions
about future ports.
He said: “I think for us it was always step one.
Let's launch Catherine, which then gives the IP owners and business owners at Atlus—who
are in their first foray into the PC market—the ability to evaluate the success and how that
can fit in for their future road map.
I'm pleased to say they now have that information, so they're able to evaluate it.
For us it was a positive experience, and hopefully they'll share that and consider it in their
own road map.”
When Catherine did well, Atlus and SEGA moved forwards with plans to see what else might
prove popular on the PC platform.
This time, they tested the waters by bringing the previous PlayStation Vita exclusive Persona
4 Golden to Steam, and this proved an even bigger success.
Said Hiraoka: “We want as many users as possible to play
our games, so depending on the title, we will try to expand the hardware options as much
as possible.
In particular, the number of people who play on Steam is increasing, and Persona 4 Golden
has sold over 1 million copies on Steam alone.
The knowledge of [Sega of Europe] was very helpful in porting this game to Steam, and
I believe that this also led to the extremely high user ratings on Steam.
This was also a great synergy.
“We fully understand that there are users who want to play games from the previous generations
of hardware but are unable to do so on current hardware.
We will consider these issues.”
From Hiraoka’s comments, it’s clear that Persona 4’s positive reception convinced
Atlus that, with SEGA’s help, Persona ports could be done to a high enough standard to
do these games justice.
This is almost certainly not the only issue affecting these ports.
Senior executives within Atlus have previously suggested that there may have been some kind
of deal with Sony that kept the games away from additional platforms for a time, but
dwelling too much on this would be idle speculation.
Nevertheless, Atlus has continued to request fan input on future ports, putting out annual
surveys repeatedly asking fans which games they would like to see ported to which platforms.
In May of this year, the annual survey was conducted in English for the first time, allowing
even more fans the opportunity to request these ports.
What we know for certain is that, having proven the success of Catherine and Persona 4 Golden
on Steam, Atlus is finally ready to bring Personas 3, 4, and 5 to the Nintendo Switch.
The moral of the story is that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
Atlus didn’t want to release a subpar port of Persona games to a middling audience reaction.
They wanted to take their time, make incremental steps towards these ports, and ensure that
there was enough of an audience to justify their work.
If this means that these ports are all of the same high quality as Persona 4 Golden
on Steam, then the wait will definitely have been worth it.