With so many huge announcements coming out of the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, it easily lands as my top showcase from this year’s Summer Games Fest. With the vast majority of the games shown slated for this year and coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one, Xbox owners have a lot to be excited about. But despite all the new games that got paraded out during the showcase’s hour and a half run-time the two biggest announcements weren’t about new games, but rather older series that are making their way to the Xbox ecosystem for the first time. Let’s talk about them.
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Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royale
A few years ago all the buzz was around rumors of Persona 5 coming to the Nintendo Switch. When that year’s Game Awards revealed the game’s lead character was coming to Nintendo’s juggernaut fighting game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the game would be making an appearance on the wildly popular console. And yet, it never happened. With this failure to materialize on the ultra-popular Switch, many started figuring whatever exclusive deal Sony had with Atlus and Sega to keep Personato itself would remain indefinitely. But, with Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 leaping onto PC not so long ago, the series’ ability to branch out and the success it would bring seem to have changed the situation. And these games are a huge get for Xbox for two big reasons.
The first is that it fills a sizeable portfolio hole for Xbox. The number of high-quality Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) is lacking on the console. This is particularly true with Square Enix taking its core Final Fantasy titles to Sony as console exclusives. Bringing all three games, not only to Xbox but to Game Pass, is a massive win to fill this void in its lineup. Especially since, baring further announcements, Xbox will be the only modern console that offers Persona 3 Portable. And game fans have been clamoring for a rerelease of for quite some time.
The second reason why this Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase announcement is so great for the Game Pass service lies in these games’ runtimes. I’ve heard that a thorough playthrough of Persona 5 Royal can stretch upwards of 200 hours. With this being the first time all three titles are available on Xbox, that means a player that has only picked up Game Pass for these games will be paying their subscription fees for several months, if not years. Games that demand that much time and get acclaimed for the quality of gameplay like the Persona series does are rare finds.
Most of Riot Games’ Catalogue
If you weren’t familiar with Riot Games and their fictional world of Runeterra a few years ago, that most likely changed with the release of the Netflix animated series Arcane. With the boom in public awareness following that series’s massive success, Riot would be foolish not to try to get their offerings in front of as many potential players as possible. Enter Xbox Game Pass.
While the announcement at Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase hinted that these may not be the only games from Riot coming to the service, it did confirm that League of Legends PC), League of Legends: Wild Rift, Legends of Runeterra, Valorant, and Teamfight Tactics will be arriving on the service sometime next year. These games have shown not only a continued level of quality, but have demonstrated their ability to hold players’ attention for years, or in the case of League of Legends, over a decade. This alone makes having these offerings an enticing get for Game Pass, but they may have found a way to make sure players keep playing on Game Pass.
Along with the announcement that these long-running games as a service were coming to Game Pass, the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase revealed some big incentives to trying out the games through the Xbox service. While Temfight Tactics’ offering of some cosmetic elements would normally be cool, it is easily outshined by the gigantic offerings of the others. Legends of Runeterra gives players access to the entire core set of the digital card game, while the others offer every character in their respective games playable on day one. While these characters are always earnable for free, they normally represent a huge investment in time to acquire. Given that League of Legends sports a roster of more than 150 playable characters, you can see what a deal this is. Not having to manually unlock all those characters will be a huge boon to new players and help guarantee that they can find reasons to stick around.
When I take the quality of these games, their already huge fan bases, and the amount of time and enjoyment they offer to players into account, I can’t see how any other news coming from the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase could be seen as bigger wins than these. They strengthen the offerings for the service in some categories it has been weak in by utilizing tried and true franchises with huge global recognition. A massive win no matter how you slice it. You can subscribe to Game Pass now with .
