Footage of what appears to be a glossy remake of Atlus’ Persona 3 and the next entry in Sega’s Jet Set Radio series leaked this weekend, further fueling rumors that Persona is the latest franchise to get a modern overhaul.
The leak spread Twitterwhich shows what appears to be shots in development Person 3, Sonic Limitsand a new one Jetset radio that reportedly dates from 2021 and was said to have been shown at an internal Sega meeting.
The Person 3 footage gets a lot of attention, with fans (understandably) calling it fake or fan-made, possibly out of mental self-preservation. But the images are possible evidence in support earlier rumours that, in addition to working on Person 6a remake of Person 3 is under development. While some details are considered suspicious by Persona fans, an analysis of the images shows how long someone tries to falsify the images Person 3 should go to — tl;dr: it’s a lot of.
UPDATE: Special thanks to the anonymous user DM for this!! So it looks like this was part of footage from SEGA’s internal meeting in Japan in 2021… The Japanese characters on the top right read “Images in development” pic.twitter.com/5sW13O1kyQ
— aikaangelica (@AVtoGAMEnoYAMI) April 9, 2023
Gematsu reported on Sunday that it has heard “a Person 3 remake has been in development at Atlus for several years.”
The validity of the footage is further supported by a never-before-seen video of Sega’s reported reboot of Jet Set Radio in action. That footage, which shows Beat Set Radio protagonist Beat dancing in the streets of Shibuya (or possibly Tokyoto) surrounded by graffiti-stained police cars, matches previously shown artwork for a project revealed via a study supposedly published by Sega. That research also showed a variety of rendering styles for Beat, Gum, and Combo characters, ranging from a simpler cel-shaded style close to the Dreamcast and Xbox games to a more detailed, painterly style.
Polygon has reached out to Sega and Atlus for comment and will update when the company responds.
Atlus has a new version of Persona 3 wearable in January on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The original Person 3 was released on PlayStation 2 in 2006, and two re-releases — Persona 3 FES And Persona 3 wearable for PS Vita – followed over the next two years.
Sega’s Jet Set Radio has been largely dormant since the release of Jet Set Radio Future in 2002, although the publisher has released versions of the original Dreamcast for modern platforms and the series’ cast has made cameo appearances in several games.