Xbox Game Pass will soon get four more Atlus games, according to a newly surfaced rumor suggesting multiple mainline installments from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise will be added to Microsoft's subscription service come spring. This claim dovetails with an early March report indicating that SMT 5 is coming to Xbox Game Pass.
Microsoft and Atlus allegedly struck another comprehensive publishing deal circa late 2022, which is when the first rumors that classic Shin Megami Tensei games are jumping ship to Xbox emerged. Prior to that, Atlus already brought Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal to Xbox Game Pass. The studio's multiplatform RPG Soul Hackers 2 was also added to the Ultimate tier of the service on February 28.
Several images posted to 4chan on March 18 appear to suggest that SMT 3, SMT 4, SMT 4 Apocalypse, and SMT 5 are now set to expand the Xbox Game Pass catalog come spring. More specifically, the anonymous poster who leaked the alleged promo materials claimed the official confirmation is coming on May 6. Atlus recently announced a Shin Megami Tensei 30-year anniversary event that's taking place in Yokohama, Japan, over a two-day period starting May 5. The only entirely new implication of the leak concerns SMT 4 Apocalypse, seeing how the aforementioned December 2022 report already claimed the other three SMT games are coming to Xbox Game Pass.
That notwithstanding, the supposed promo materials contained in the leak don't appear to include any previously unseen character artwork, meaning the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and other platform logos at the bottom of one of the leaked images could have easily been edited in by anyone. And speaking of which, the lack of the PlayStation logo in the leaked image casts further doubt on the veracity of this rumor, even though Atlus does have an erratic track record when it comes to deciding on the platform targets for its games.
Be that as it may, the company's multiplatform titles have never circumvented Sony's consoles, not to mention that the 2013 Sega acquisition also started stabilizing Atlus's overall platform strategy. Meaning that four SMT remasters releasing on pretty much every modern system bar those from Sony wouldn't be just unusual but unprecedented. The alleged timing of this announcement also wouldn't help Microsoft's ongoing PR campaign seeking to convince regulators that limiting PlayStation's game library wouldn't make sense for Xbox.
The fact that Soul Hackers 2's Xbox Game Pass launch leaked weeks in advance and that hints of an SMT 5 PC port date back to the September 2021 Nvidia GeForce leak don't necessarily add credence to this newly surfaced rumor, either. Not least because combining credible reports with made-up claims is a common troll tactic, so this supposed leak should still be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Source: 4channel