Older Japanese RPG are suddenly getting new Steam releases. Even big franchises like Tales of and Disgaea are suddenly on Steam and Square has almost all of the Final Fantasy games on there. I don't know where this sudden boom is coming from and if these ports are actually good. And Atlus has already published some games on there, even if they are all from other studios, like ACE team.

But I guess its still more dream then reality. The only titles that don't need much work to me remade, are Persona 4 Golden and maybe the ios port Shin Megami Tensei. Do you think there is money in releasing some of the older PS2 and 3DS titles, with higher resolutions on Steam ? Personally, I would kill for a good SMT3 Nocturne port on Steam.

Question mostly revolves around who has publishing/IP rights around those games. For example wasn't Sony tied in to Persona 4? As a more recent example I know Nintendo was heavily tied in with Tokyo Mirage Sessions so that will likely never come to a non-Nintendo platform.

I would love this, but I wonder if it will happen any time soon.

When you say some games (P4G) don't need much work, I guess you are talking about the visual quality? I do agree with you, but I'm not sure we know enough about PS3/Vita conversion to PC to say how challenging a task it really is. We know the PS3 is a complete bastard, with a very different dev environment, and we've also seen a lot of PC games take their sweet ass time coming to Vita; to me, this must speak a little to the porting difficulties.

While I would adore this and I absolutely do think there's money to be made by doing so, Atlus so far has unfortunately only really published the stuff not developed by them and also it's all stuff that has more of a western tilt so it seems unlikely to happen.

@geraltitude: I have no idea how hard it would be to port those games but some pretty popular and lesser known Vita games have been released on Steam, and most of them seem to have good reviews, even if can't always trust steam reviews. Dangon Ronpa 1 and 2, Mind.Zero, Corpse Party. And P4G doesn't have that much of touch controls, so that problem would be easily fixed. But then again, I'm no developer.

Possibly but I wouldn't bet on anytime soon. Atlus the developer seems to still be very Japanese market focused in a way that almost no other Japanese devs has been in a long time. They are in Dragon Quest land where their stuff is still super successful domestically. While the western interest in the series is probably larger than most other Japanese franchises it's still probably still probably not that proportionately large enough to motivate too much catering to.

Also going by 8-4 steam is still not a thing in Japan. Mostly due to steam not really seperating their regional stores and versions of games in a way Japan would like. So a Steam release is really only for Western fans.

Ultimately this is going to come down to how much pressure SEGA is going to put on them to maximize international sales, since there are already plenty of SEGA developed and published games on Steam.

However, I'd personally be disappointed if they only ever developed games for the PC market, since games like SMT: Strange Journey, TMS#FE, and to some extent P4G do make good use of those systems unique hardware in a way that really supports the experience in a way they couldn't on PC. As much as I'd like to see an HD version of SMTIV, everything from the polygon count and texture resolution to the actual rendering software and lighting model were built from the ground up for 3DS. Not to mention they probably aren't set up to bug test on a much wider range of hardware, though maybe SEGA could help with that.

All things considered, I really just hope they port SMT1 to anything other than iOS. Hell, the PS2 games don't emulate perfectly on PS3 as it is, so porting them one more time really couldn't hurt. I guess it kind of depends on how P5 is received in the west whether they decide to cater more to the PC market or focus more on Nintendo/PS.

Y'know, I wouldn't think there's much of a market for JRPGs on the PC. I wonder if Valkyria Chronicles was some sort of test case. Also, yeah, being Playstation exclusives come with certain technical obstacles.

If Square Enix can, I don't see why Atlus can't.

@shindig: With the mass PC adoption starting in the last gen. There's probably larger chunk of a jrpg market than one would initially think. The PC market is mostly a console players and console refugees from all sides of the console market.

I would say it probably larger than the jrpg market on Xbox.

I would also say definitely larger than the one on WiiU especially. Xenoblade and TMS didn't sell to a jrpg market waiting to be exploited; so much as created their own jrpg market by selling WiiUs.

I really wish they would....

If I could play Persona4G on my PC, I would be so happy. I'm not even that into jrpgs, but I would buy any Persona games they released.

Never say never, but I wouldn't count on it anytime soon. Atlus is still a very Japan centric company and most of Japan just doesn't give enough of a fuck about PCs.

With Spike Chunsoft jumping onto the PC train as it has, anything is possible at this point. However, I still have serious doubts, and I would imagine that Atlus themselves has no desire to do it..

I think Atlus just doesn't have the number of people to do PC porting and are too into starting up new games (From what I heard there like 200 people at max). And if they do porting they would do it themselves and not let other studios do it. Only Atlus have ever develop there own games other than a few spin-offs.

It is tough for not being able to get their games on PC but then maybe it time to invest in getting the console you can get Atlus games on.

Note: The topic is a little old but I felt it was still present since recent news.

I would love for this to happen, although I don't expect it to in the near term. I would love to have friends of mine play games like Persona 4 who haven't been able to because they've packed away their PS2. Atlus seems too small to be pumping out PC ports.

I'd love the opportunity to play P4: Dancing All Night on PC. I'm not sure how much longer my PS TV can justify staying plugged in.

I'm pretty sure Atlus don't own the exclusive rights to publish their games worldwide (They don't even have a PAL branch). For instance, Deep Silver just acquired the PAL publishing rights for the foreseeable future (after it looked like Persona 5 may not even release in Europe). Previous publishers have included Atlus themselves, Ghostlight, NIS America, Ubisoft, Sega, Square Enix and Nintendo. You would have to convince Atlus that it was a good idea, and then track down deals with all of these previous publishers for each individual game and territory.

Honestly? I don't think it's gonna happen any time "soon," but I would be shocked if they don't show up on PC in the next few years. Aside from Nintendo and Sony, who have very obvious reasons for not putting their games out on PC, they seem like the last notable holdout that comes to mind.

I don't think so. Sure, it may make sense to people outside the company talking numbers, but I have, over the years, become convinced it's more of a philosophical thing rooted within Atlus. They're very strict regarding content sharing. I remember they made public announcements back when PQ came out that they would actively try taking down spoilers. Persona 5 had the entire record function blocked on PS4. Basically, if you want to experience their games in any way, you had better buy it. So, why would they do a Steam release, knowing it's practically an open invitation to piracy? It doesn't make sense from a company philosophy standpoint, and that's why I struggle to think of any game they've published that made its way to a PC release.

There's nothing I'd buy more quickly than releases of all the Persona games starting with 3:FES on Steam, but I don't think this is ever going to happen. At least not with just the pure Atlus team. Maybe with the recent push from SEGA to put their stuff out on PC (Bayonetta, Vanquished), there will be a push from them for that to happen. But I'm not holding my breath.