Here’s Why Persona 4 May Herald a New PC ‘Golden’ Age for Sega
Sega's roster is chock-full of titles that should have been ported to Steam years ago. | Source: Sega
- Persona 4 Golden’s PC release has been a smashing success.
- Sega hopes to replicate it with more retro titles.
- Could Persona 4 herald the rebirth of “Sega PC?”
Twelve years after the base game launched on PlayStation 2, Sega finally ported Persona 4 Golden to PC. The launch was a smashing success, and it caught Sega’s attention.
According to industry publication GamesIndustry.biz, the gaming publisher intends to make a hard pivot toward its burgeoning PC business:
Sega will start “aggressively” porting games from its back catalogue to Steam, due to the strength of digital PC sales during the COVID-19 lockdown.
It sounds to me like Sega PC is about to make one heck of a comeback. It’s like the 90s all over again, but thankfully with better graphics.
Sega PC Was a Classic Era in Gaming History
Throughout the 1990s, “Sega PC” was a catch-all label the publisher slapped on games it ported to PC.
The original Sega PC catalog was something to behold, as you can see in the video below:
Everything from Sonic CD to Daytona USA made its way to personal computers, making Sega titles accessible to a new audience.
That started to change in the early 2000s. Since then, plenty of Sega properties have been mysteriously absent from PC. Yakuza 0 scored a port, but the rest of the series didn’t.
It’s a similar story with The House of the Dead. The first three titles in the arcade franchise made their way to PC, but neither The House of the Dead 4 (2005), The House of the Dead 4 Special (2006), nor House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn (2018) has gotten a port.
If Sega is really serious about porting their back catalog to Steam, we could be in for an exciting couple of years.
Persona 4 Proves It’s Time Sega Brings More Titles to PC
Sega’s roster is chock-full of titles that should have been ported to Steam years ago.
Light gun arcade games are natural fits for PC since you can just use a mouse to shoot, which is why there’s no excuse for waiting this long to port the rest of the House of the Dead franchise to Steam. That’s even more true since HOTD 4 and Scarlet Dawn are both ridiculously hard to find outside of Japan.
While we’re at it, the rest of the Persona series deserves a Steam release too. Persona 4 Golden was an excellent candidate to test the demand for JRPG ports, but its predecessors were stunning games in their own right.
That doesn’t even begin to cover the legions of arcade titles Sega has produced over the decades. I could even see the Initial D Arcade Stage games attracting a cult following – though gamers will have to provide their own hardware setups.
The possibilities are almost endless . And if the unexpected success of Persona 4 Golden is any indicator, the future for Sega PC is bright.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.
