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Atlus has announced that Persona 4 Arena Ultimax will be getting rollback netcode. The catch is that it won’t be there at the game’s launch on March 17. Instead, rollback netcode will make its way to the game this summer. It’s disappointing that rollback won’t be present at launch, but it’s good to see its inclusion regardless.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax‘s re-release is part of Atlus’ plan to bring classic titles to modern systems. It all started with Persona 4 Golden‘s release on Steam and continued with the classic JRPG Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne‘s HD remaster. These releases have done well for Atlus, and it’s likely we’ll see more somewhere down the line (like Persona 3 FES, right Atlus?).
Time to make history, in a few months from now
Rollback netcode is a big deal to many in the fighting game community. It’s arguably been one of the most important additions to the genre in the last few years. In the past, fighting games have had serious problems online. Sometimes to the point where the online mode was often unplayable. But now, more titles are starting to adopt rollback netcode into their multiplayer experiences.
In very simple terms, rollback netcode is a system that makes lag almost unnoticeable. There are still loads of fighting games that opt to go for delay-based netcode instead, though. However, this kind of setup has issues if either player has a bad connection. Frequently, this causes matches to lag and stutter, ruining many of them in the process. It also makes it difficult to pull off intense combos and react quickly to your opponent.
#P4AU Producer Wada-san has a very exciting message!
Delay-based netcode was, and still is, a system that doesn’t really work for these kinds of games. Rollback netcode, however, is beloved by fighting game players because it almost entirely eliminates this kind of lag. Whenever the connection becomes unstable, the game simply rolls back to a previous point and the action continues.
Arc System Works, the main developer of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, has been a supporter of rollback netcode. So, it isn’t a massive surprise to see it appear in the game, especially since its latest title, Guilty Gear Strive, included rollback netcode at launch. Hopefully, other fighting games continue this trend, like Capcom’s newly announced Street Fighter 6.
