SEGA launched Persona 4 Golden on PC in early June and the game went on to be a smash hit of sorts, selling over 500K units via Steam in a month. User reviews are also overwhelmingly positive, with an astounding 96% approval rate.
During the recent Q1 2021 earnings call, SEGA President and Group COO Haruki Satomi and Senior Executive Vice President and Group CFO Koichi Fukazawa replied to a few questions from the investors. The transcription is now available (in Japanese) on the official website.
One of the answers is well worth highlighting, since it suggests that SEGA will now strive to not only port other games to PC/Steam but also prepare PC releases from the get-go for brand new entries of its franchises.
Q: “Persona 4 Golden” has been selling well on Steam, but do you have any plans to sell newly released games on Steam as well?
A: We remastered “Persona 4 Golden”, a title previously released on the PlayStation Vita, and launched it for sale on Steam this fiscal year. Because of the game’s critical acclaim and its low selling price, sales were much stronger than expected. We will continue to actively promote porting previously released titles to Steam and new platforms. We are also negotiating with platform holders for new games in the future, and we’re considering ways to sell under favorable conditions for each title. Among those there are measures such as preparing PC versions of the games from the beginning, with multi-platform releases in mind.
Indeed, SEGA has been deploying several previous Yakuza games on PC, and the next installment (Like a Dragon) will release simultaneously on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC this November. Phantasy Star Online 2 also recently launched on Steam, while the New Genesis expansion/overhaul is planned for a debut in 2021 on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.