Persona 4 Golden is now on PC, and the port is by all accounts very good. It appears that Atlus Japan itself led efforts on this new release, in partnership with a venerable port house. This is notable in large part because Catherine Classic on PC had previously been led by international Sega divisions, and was never even released in Japan – and because it suggests Atlus’s main studio is gearing up for more hands-on PC development.
The credits for Persona 4 Golden on PC – likely dug out of the game files, since the 80 or so hours required to beat the game haven’t even elapsed since release – specifically call out the “Steam edition staff”, led by director Daisuke Yajima, an Atlus veteran who’s worked on everything from Trauma Center: Second Opinion to Persona 5.
As Persona Central notes, the bulk of PC production work seems to have gone to Preapp Partners, a Japanese studio that is lightly-documented, but which has helped build plenty of solid PC ports for Japanese titles in the past.
The PC port of Catherine Classic was led by Sega Europe and Australian studio The Eccentric Ape, with apparently little involvement from Atlus Japan.
Ahead of the announcement (and release) of Persona 4 Golden, Atlus opened up a new Steam creator page to highlight its releases, which now include both Catherine and P4G. All this suggests that Atlus is getting much more serious about its PC port efforts, which is an exciting implication for fans of RPG games. (But while I’d like that PC version of Persona 5 as much as anyone, I gotta say that my heart is holding out for a new version of Trauma Center…)