A representative from Atlus confirmed with Polygon that the information in Famitsu details an update planned for the Japanese arcade version of Persona 4 Arena.
"It's an arcade-only update in Japan," the representative told Polygon. "No word on it coming to consoles in NA."
It's hard to imagine a time before Persona spin-offs, but Persona 4 Arena marked the turning point from a humble RPG series to something greater.
Persona 4 has been an incredibly popular series for Atlus over the years. After its initial release on the PlayStation 2 in 2008, it has received a remake, multiple sequels, and various adaptations. Out of all of the ways that fans imagined their favorite characters interacting on screen, seeing them beat the life bars out of each other probably wasn’t what they had in mind. Today, we’ll be taking a closer look at one of the most interesting genre crossovers of the early 2010s, Persona 4 Arena.
Atlus’ Persona series has exploded in popularity. This means there are not only mainline installments, but also ports, updated releases, reimaginings and spin-offs. There are all interesting games that do cool things with elements from the series, but it is also a series where you probably shouldn’t go and begin with the very first game. Fortunately, it isn’t difficult to find a good starting point.
Frome what I remember, the PSP version of Persona 3 added the ability to command your teammates in battle? There was something different/better about battle for the PSP one. I remember noticing because I played 4, started 3 on PSP, then started over when i got the ps2 version.
I would def recommend playing either 3 or 4 before 5. the menus and the colors and fonts and everything in 5 was just SO MUCH to get used to. I felt like it was a comic book and an episode of JoJo at once. Amazing game, though lol
That representative was likely an American/Western one who wasn't sure about if the update is western-bound (they probably didn't call up the American voice actors yet since they probably didn't flesh-out the story versions of Yukari and junpei yet). I suspect that the arcade update was handled by Arc Systems (since they work on actual fighting mechanics and do the art for Arena) while Atlus is busy writing the plot for the story element. Of course Atlus would bring this update to consoles, considering how popular the fighting game was at tournaments this year.
Polygon has had some iffy / incorrect news recently... so I am not holding my breathe. At most this is only true for now and we will probably see it down the road like most / all ARC releases.
Probably no current plans, but Atlus and ArcSys got somethin in the works.
Somebody should leak the arcade files like they did with BlazBlue CS and KoF XIII.