We all know Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, the successful JRPG franchise from Atlus. Despite being a spin-off of Shin Megami Tensei, it's safe to say that Persona has gained its own life, and perhaps overtaken its main line in popularity. The Persona series has always been for PlayStation consoles or handhelds, while spinoffs of Persona 4 have made appearances on the Nintendo 3DS and XBox 360 (Persona Q, Persona 4: Arena, etc.). The only time a Persona game hit the shores of PC gaming (only in Japan), was in 1999, with the first game. Never again a Persona title appeared on PC. Anthony Tillery, a fan of the franchise, decided to start a change.org petition to Atlus and SEGA to ask them to consider to port Persona 5 on PC to make it happen again.
We all know that these online petitions seldomly make a difference. On the other hand, they can sometimes be useful to show the interested parties where the hearts of the people lie. This petition in particular already breached the 500 signs wall in less than 2 days. It shows that there's interest for the franchise in the PC market.
JRPGs hold a certain stigma on PC. It's often assumed that this genre isn't a big seller on that platform. In recent times, though, costumers told a very different story. When SEGA (who own Atlus) decided to port the original Valkyria Chronicles on the PC, the game jumped to the number one top selling position on Steam and remained there for a long time over big name releases like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Final Fantasy XIII's PC version held similar results. Maybe in the past there wasn't a huge market for JRPGs on PC, but this data hints that maybe it's not the case anymore.
Of course there's still the possibility that Atlus is bonded by a deal of exclusivity with Sony. It made spin-offs for other platforms but sometimes spin-off titles are not included in these kind of contracts. At this moment, though, we have no information of a possible agreement between Atlus and Sony on that front.
It's hard to say if this petition will make Atlus and SEGA consider a Persona 5 PC port. It happened in the past with Dark Souls though. One thing is sure: there are a lot of people who would love to see a Persona title on PC and that alone should give the publisher food for thought.
What you think of this petition? Would you like to see Persona 5 on PC? Let us know in the comments.
