 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 Atlas and publisher Sega decided to dump these three iconic Persona games on as many platforms as possible, including the Nintendo Switch? Atlas 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, Atlas brand manager Neoto Hirooka said, We don't have a specific answer to give for that question, but I personally think that 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 Atlas 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 Atlas to release Persona games more widely. Considering Atlas' hesitancy, moves towards these ports have been slow. At first, Atlas 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 Atlas, who were in their first foray into the PC market, the ability to evaluate the success and how that can fit for their future roadmap. 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 roadmap. When Catherine did well, Atlas and Sega move 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. 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 one 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 Atlas 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. Nevertheless, Atlas 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, Atlas is finally ready to bring Persona's 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. Atlas didn't want to release a sub-power 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 all these ports are of the same high quality as Persona 4 Golden on Steam, then the wait will definitely have been worth it.