We Never Saw It Coming: Persona on Xbox

Xbox and Atlus have recently made the surprise announcement, that three Persona games will be released for the modern Xbox consoles. This comes after twenty-five years of the series being exclusive to Playstation consoles. The Persona series celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary this year and has continued to rise in popularity since the nineteen ninety-six release Person Revelations. The most recent installment into the Persona series, Persona 5 Royal will make its debut on Xbox Gamepass October 21st, 2022. Longtime Persona fan and Professional YouTuber Nic Owen said, “Good for Xbox only players. I think the Xbox has always had the least amount of good JRPGs, and that's a great series for them to get to try.”. All of this is happening just months after Microsoft bought major video game publisher Bethesda in an attempt to compete with console exclusives offered by PlayStation and Nintendo. With this relationship being built between Atlus and Xbox, fans of JRPGs will likely give the Gamepass video game subscription service a try furthering the modern console dominance being shown by Xbox. Following the release of Persona 5 Royal to Gamepass, Persona 3 Portable, and Persona 4 Golden will also be released on the subscription service. Persona 3 Portable was released on Sony’s PSP console in 2006 and has not been released since. Persona 4 Golden was released exclusively for Sony’s PSvita in 2012 until earlier this year when it made a surprise release for the PC application STEAM. On this year of a silver anniversary for the Persona franchise there have been many surprises. Will this move to make their games available to more consumers on more platforms serve Atlus well? Only time will tell. The excitement is truly there and this announcement has done nothing but increase the buzz surrounding an already legendary group of Atlus tittles.