Chinese company Perfect World announced on April 13 its teaming up with Sega and Atlus for a Persona 5 mobile game, Code Name: X – a trailer was published, and the game was announced in China, but will it release in the West as well?
Chinese game company Perfect World has announced it is working on a mobile game for a famous JRPG IP.
While the game is only known as CODE NAME: X, it is very clearly a mobile game based on the Persona IP.
It is currently in early development and only confirmed for China atm
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) April 13, 2021
Why Perfect World is making a Persona 5 mobile game?
Chinese companies such as Perfect World are known for buying Japanese licenses of what is commonly called in China ACG – Anime, Comics, Games – to make their own mobile adaptations and spinoffs.
Persona, with Persona 5 first released in September 2016 on PS3 and PS4, became one of the most popular JRPG series of all time in the world, following behind Final Fantasy. Whether in Japan, China, or several East Asian countries, mobile has been a bigger market than consoles for years now. It was only a matter of time until something as big as Persona got one of these mobile projects in China.
Lastly, Code Name: X seems to be in early phase of development. Looks like we’ll only learn more later on. Including the game’s official title. Code Name: X certainly being a tentative name. It’s also important to note analyst Daniel Ahmad confirmed with Perfect World the game is Persona related.
Perfect World confirmed to me its based on the Persona IP
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) April 13, 2021
Will Code Project :X release in the west?
Overall, there are two types of Chinese games. Those geared for the worldwide market, such as Genshin Impact. And those specifically made for the Chinese mobile market. Code Project : X is definitely part of the second category.
These projects are fully geared towards the Chinese market, and tend to stay there. There are several mobile games based on popular anime or Japanese games that never leave China. Some of which you’ll never even hear of.
However, some of these games do end up released in the West. So for now, the only thing we can do is wait and wait for future announcements. Most notably with the 25th anniversary of the Persona series coming this 2021.
