Metaphor: ReFantazio

Atlus/Sega

Imagine you bought a game, only to later find out that a better version of it was going to be released in the near future. That’s upsetting, right?

Well, Sega recently realized that some gamers have caught on to its antics and that’s why some of them aren’t buying their games right away. According to Automaton, Sega tried to explain in a recent investor’s call why there was a sudden drop in sales of catalogue titles (games released during past fiscal years) compared to the previous year.

Sega alluded that one of the reasons is that gamers have been expecting a “definitive edition” of their brand new releases in a few years before picking it up. After all, it’ll have much more content and new features, so why pay full price and play a technically “inferior” version now?

Persona 5 and Shin Megami Tensei V are great examples of this. They were released in 2016/2017 and 2021, respectively. Then in 2019/2020 and 2024, Atlus released Persona 5 Royal and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance.

What’s worse is that you have to pay full price for these games, and there’s no upgrade path where if you had the original game, you could get the shiny new definitive edition at a large discount. This causes some players who bought the original to feel burned, even if they enjoyed the experience.

Granted, Atlus has a bit of wiggle room here. Persona 5 was initially a PS3/Ps4 exclusive, and SMTV was a Switch exclusive. With their respective upgrades, they were now available on every modern platform, including PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch. Those that don’t have multiple gaming platforms might be excited for them to finally come out on the one that they own, but there’s a large segment of gamers out their who do own multiple.

I wrote about this exact situation last week, where NIS announced Ys X: Proud Nordics so closely after the original game’s global release. Fans were definitely upset.

Honestly, the easiest way to solve this is to simply apply the aforementioned upgrade path for owners of the original game. While that may impact sales, it’ll ultimately build goodwill.

Logistically, however, that might be more trouble than it’s worth. Persona 5 Royal and SMTV have so many different change, content additions, and improvements over their original counterparts that on the back end, the two versions may be completely incompatible. Importing save files could be a technical nightmare to deal with.

Games like Final Fantasy VII Remake and its PS5 upgrade, Intergrade, were able to do so because the two games are exactly the same. The PS5 exclusive Intergrade intermission was a separate game mode, which I would imagine makes it easier to import existing PS4 save files to the PS5 version.

Some gamers are expecting that Metaphor: ReFantazio will be the next Atlus title to get some sort of “definitive” edition, so they’re holding off on purchasing one of the best games of 2024.

However, it seems like Sega is learning its lesson. It announced that while it’s delisting the PS4/Xbox One versions of Yakuza 0 and replacing it with Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut, along with delisting Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2, those who’ve already bought them are eligible for upgrade paths to the PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions.

Unfortunately, the upgrade paths only apply to digital versions and not physical. I guess you can’t win them all.