Sega’s aware of just how well Persona 4: Golden‘s been doing on Steam since launching in June, and the publisher is looking to port more classic games, as well as create deals for new ones, too.
Speaking at a quarterly earnings investor presentation (ta, PersonaCentral), Sega Sammy president and group COO Haruki Satomi, and Sega Sammy senior executive vice president and group CFO Koichi Fukazawa, said Persoa 4’s strong sales has inspired the publisher to double down on porting efforts. “Because of [Persona 4: Golden’s] critical acclaim and its low selling price, sales were much stronger than expected,” the executives stated. “We will continue to actively promote porting previously released titles to Steam and new platforms.”
Not only does this potentially mean more of Atlus’ RPG games and anime games that haven’t been widely available in years, but deals are being made for upcoming releases, too. “We are also negotiating with platform holders for new games in the future, and we’re considering ways to sell under favorable conditions for each title,” the executives said. “Among them are measures such as preparing PC versions of the titles from the beginning, with multi-platform releases in mind.”
The latter is already starting. Yakuza: Like A Dragon is getting a western release on multiple platforms, including PC, on November 13, only 10 months after coming out in Japan. It previously took over three years for Yakuza 0 to come to Steam, so the gap’s shrinking considerably.
Persona 4: Golden sold half a million copies within a month of hitting PC. The resulting fandom has inspired some other projects in preservation, like one fan’s ongoing effort to digitize an out-of-print card game based on the Persona series.