During the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase, Atlus officially announced that a remake of Persona 3 will be released sometime in early 2024. The remake will be titled Persona 3 Reload and will be released on the Xbox Series X/S, Xbox On, PC, and Xbox Game Pass. It will also be available on the PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles later on.
Xbox posted a 1-minute gameplay trailer that highlights the game’s updated visual style, reminiscent of Persona 5.
According to both IGN and Gamespot, Persona 3 Reload will be a faithful remake of the original version of the video game. As such, content from Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable versions will not be included in Reload. This includes the ability to play as a female protagonist.
Persona 3 Reload producer Ryota Niitsuma and chief director Kazuhisa Wada both confirmed the matter, with Niitsuma saying:
So first I’d like to mention that since the basic concept of the Persona 3 remake was to remake the Persona 3, we don’t have the FES and Portable contents included. We wanted to really genuinely work on recreating the Persona 3 experience.
We can’t really go into the details at this point yet, but we have remade basically everything from scratch as for Persona 3 the original version. We have newly recorded voices [and] new scenes and events. We also have both new and arranged music. We’ll be kind of releasing that information, following everything. So please look forward to that.
Persona 3 was originally released in Japan in 2006 and in North America the following year on the PS2. The updated Persona 3 FES version was released in 2007 as well, with new features and a playable epilogue. The PSP version titled Persona 3 Portable was released in 2010 and featured the alternate female protagonist, The Portable version was re-released on modern platforms earlier this year.
Atlus’s Persona franchise is a spinoff of the Megami Tensei series and has released several video game entries throughout its long history. The most recent releases include Persona 4 and Persona 5, with the latter inspiring a TV anime adaptation that aired from 2018 to 2019. Aside from anime, the franchise has also spawned numerous films, novels, manga series, stage plays, radio dramas, and musical concerts.
