Persona PS5 PlayStation 5 1

Some of the games announced during Microsoft’s big Xbox Showcase on Sunday are coming to the PS5 and PS4 – but it would appear you weren’t supposed to know for at least 48 hours. It seems that the Redmond firm enforced embargoes on some of its partners, including Atlus and Koei Tecmo. We received press releases from both publishers, embargoed until 6PM BST today, preventing us from mentioning the PlayStation ports.

Now this information was ultimately published prematurely by other websites, enabling us to bring you the news earlier than intended, but it’s still noteworthy. Platform holders rarely ever mention competing consoles during press conferences, of course – but usually, publishers will clarify which platforms their games are coming to in press releases and social media posts sent out immediately afterwards. This was true for Street Fighter 6 and Resident Evil 4, for example, which were both announced at Sony’s most recent State of Play.

However, in this instance, it appears that Microsoft didn’t want news of the PS5 versions of Persona and PS5 and PS4 versions of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty to be publicised until at least two days after its Xbox Showcase. As far as we understand, this was enforced specifically on the Japanese titles, as games like Minecraft Legends were announced for rival platforms like the PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch immediately after the livestream.

Of course, it’s understandable that Microsoft wants to associate Xbox with these games, especially when it’s largely considered to have a weaker selection of Japanese titles than its competitors. But we’d argue that having those games on its big stage already served its purpose, and embargoing platforms is just keeping players in the dark. Ultimately, it is just 48 hours, so it’s not the end of the world. But we figured this was worth reporting in case of similar situations in the future, when you may be left wondering whether a game announced at an Xbox Showcase is coming to PS5 and PS4 or not.