Many fans were surprised when Atlus made a surprise appearance at The Game Awards 2021 to announce that Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, the 2013 fighting game spin-off of its beloved JRPG series, would be returning to new platforms including PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4. While many were excited about this announcement, many were disappointed to learn that a crucial part of the modern fighting game experience would not be making its way to these new ports of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax: Rollback netcode.
Thankfully, as part of its Persona 25th anniversary announcements, Atlus officially confirmed earlier this week that Persona 4 Arena Ultimax's newest port will be receiving rollback netcode as part of a free update coming this summer. This announcement was made just under three weeks before the re-release of the game, with many fans of the fighting game genre excited for the return of this beloved fighting game. With the ever-increasing importance of rollback netcode, here is why Atlus adding rollback to Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is a great call.
Rollback Netcode, Explained
Despite the importance of rollback netcode in the fighting game community, and its increased relevance in the past few years, many casual fighting game players still do not know what exactly rollback netcode is. Put simply, rollback netcode is centered around negating all delay that could come between a player pressing an input on a controller, and the game's reaction. This type of netcode essentially attempts to predict some of the player's inputs just before they react in order to offer a smoother experience for all parties involved and reduce the amount of delay.
The implementation of this style of netcode has been met with hugely positive response from the fighting game community throughout the years, with fans calling for it to be a mainstay of the genre in online play. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic required fighting game developers such as Arc System Works and Capcom to carefully consider their approach to their games' online components moving forward, as physical events such as EVO and Capcom Pro Tour had been canceled indefinitely.
This led to many studios finally answering fans' calls to implement rollback netcode in games, which led to older games such as Street Fighter 5 implementing this type of networking, while newer games such as Guilty Gear Strive, The King of Fighters 15, and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl have launched with rollback.
In 2022, even as fighting game events make a return in physical forms, the pandemic has caused the relevance of strong netcode to increase substantially in the world of fighting games. Major FGC events have been held online over the past two years, and despite shows such as EVO promising to return in a physical form, it doesn't mean that the longevity any fighting game competitively depends on strong netcode.
Why Rollback Netcode is Important For Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
While the implementation of rollback netcode for any fighting game is an important feature in 2022, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is a very special case in that it is a game from almost a decade ago, receiving a feature most major fighting games still launch without today. This sets P4 Arena Ultimax up for a potentially huge revival in 2022. While Arc System Works and Atlus have yet to confirm whether the game will receive any new content, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax's implementation of rollback could potentially allow it to be included in major fighting game events as a featured title, reviving the game's competitive scene.
If such a revival were to take place, it could lead to Arc System Works and Atlus reconsidering the game's future, potentially even adding new characters and implementing new patches in the future. It would be a rare revival of a dormant fighting game under new conditions, if the fanfare is there for the game when the rollback netcode is implemented this summer.
Such growth in popularity could even see a potential greenlight for a much-requested follow-up in the form of Persona 5 Arena, centering around characters from Persona 5 and its spin-offs. Arc System Works has long struggled to have the freedom to implement features such as rollback to its other licensed games such as Dragon Ball FighterZ, due to interference with the rights holders, but the sky's the limit when it comes to its relationship with Atlus, which appears to be much stronger.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax releases on March 17, 2022, for PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.
