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Persona 5 Royal is coming to Nintendo Switch this October. The fandom’s prayers have been answered and Atlus is finally bringing its beloved JRPG to the hybrid console with all of its downloadable content and more. Job done, now we can start asking for something else.
The mammoth game takes hundreds of hours to complete, so on the surface it is perfect for the Nintendo Switch, and don’t we know it. Ever since the hardware was first released we’ve seen Persona fans clamouring to have this game ported onto the system, and now we’re finally getting our wish after a very long wait. It’s landing this October, although it will likely come with a handful of visual and performance compromises like most ports these days.
It’s also coming to PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on the same day - meaning that what was once a PlayStation exclusive will soon be available on every platform under the sun. Persona 5 has long taken over the world, but now it feels like that reputation has superseded itself to become something more. I will admit that the constant complaints of the game not being on Nintendo Switch were a bit obnoxious, and I didn’t see the appeal of a game you’d already put 100+ hours into coming to another platform as a good thing.
New fans will no doubt discover Persona for the first time through this port and that’s awesome, but they aren’t part of the thousands of people spamming social media timelines and live chats with requests to bring Atlus’ golden child to Nintendo’s console. These are people who have done their time, amassed all the social links, and seemingly just want a way to swoon over their waifus and husbandos in bed instead of on the sofa. More power to them, but part of me feels that after six years it’s time to move on from Persona 5.
I understand why Persona 5 has established such a pronounced position in the cultural zeitgeist. It invented both jazz music and the colour red, two pretty huge things we see all the time, so fans have naturally latched onto its universe and characters and hoped to see more and more from them in the years to come. But in the six years since it first launched - and goodness knows how many since it was first announced - we’ve had Persona 5, Persona 5 Royal, Persona 5 Strikers, Persona 5 The Animation, Persona 5: Dancing In Starlight, and so much other merchandise to capitalise on the game’s popularity.
Atlus is building out the universe and taking advantage of obvious fan fervour to make some pennies, but after six long years I’d love to see the series move forward. You could argue that Persona 6 should instead be a sequel to 5, but I’ve always loved this property because each new game feels like an entirely new experience. Each game in the series has been a fascinating reflection of Japan’s youth and society, tackling specific themes with an aesthetic that also seeks to push boundaries and stand out from whatever came before. Persona 3, 4, and 5 are classics because of that philosophy, so I’m partly uneasy to have heard nothing yet from Atlus about what awaits us. Will it continue to milk the Persona 5 cow in the years to come, or is a new game just around the corner waiting to pounce on us.
I hope it’s the latter, and I hope whatever it ends up being is a stark, unexpected delight that builds upon everything that came before while also doing something completely new. Persona 5’s arrival on so many new platforms should be both a celebration of its arrival and the beginning of the end, a signature from Atlus that it plans to move into the future and explore bold new ideas instead of clinging onto its successful past. Persona 5 will live on through its iconic characters and aesthetic, but there is still room for the series to grow as it becomes more daring and progressive in the face of a world that isn’t getting any better.