Ever since its announcement in April 2019, fans have been desperately awaiting a localization announcement for Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers. The game, which is a mashup of the Persona series of turn-based RPGs with social sim mechanics and Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors franchise of action games, was seemingly indirectly announced a few months ago during Koei Tecmo’s financial earnings report. It seems now that the publisher has walked back this announcement, as Persona 5 Scramble is absent from its newly published Q2 earnings report.
Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers previously released in Japan on February 20th 2020, and ever since fans have been eagerly anticipating an announcement from Atlus West regarding a localization, especially after Persona 5 Royal‘s debut as the highest rated game of 2020 so far. Unfortunately, the game’s localization has still not been announced, with Atlus West already releasing a localization of 2019’s 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and future localizations of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne HD and Shin Megami Tensei 5, coming in 2021.
Koei Tecmo’s newest financial report, which highlights games released in the second quarter of the company’s fiscal year 2020, does not mention a European and North American release of Persona 5 Scramble whatsoever, only mentioning the game’s Asian release, which was on June 18th 2020. The only upcoming game the report alludes to is the upcoming Legend of Zelda spin-off Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.
What this means for Persona 5 Scramble is that, while it is an inevitability that the game will release outside of Japan given the critical and financial success of Persona 5 and its spin-offs, it is unlikely that Persona 5 Scramble will release any time in 2020, and may be pushed until after February 2021, given that that’s when Koei Tecmo’s FY 2020 will end. Fiscal earning reports are aimed towards the company’s investors, meaning it is highly unlikely that the company would leave out titles it is intending to release in its current report.
While Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force handled primary development of Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers, the game was developed under Atlus’ supervision and given Atlus’s protection of its properties, it is easy to assume that Atlus West wants to handle the game’s localization instead of handing it off to Koei Tecmo. The team did the same thing with the Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem crossover title Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE on the Wii U instead of having Nintendo handle the game’s localization.
During the release of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim the western branch for Atlus was also outspoken about the difficulty of finishing the game’s English voice acting recording from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the team is also creating an English dub for Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne HD, and likely another for Shin Megami Tensei 5, it can also be assumed that a localization for Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers is either on hold or at a standstill due to the troubles surrounding recording the game’s English dub during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is all speculation and should be treated as such, but for now a localization of Persona 5 Scramble seems like a question of “when” rather than “if”.
Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 released in Japan on February 20th 2020.
Source: Dualshockers
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