Persona 5 Royal Collab Announced in English Version of Heaven Burns Red, Way Ahead Of The Usual Schedule
The Persona 5 Royal collab will release in October 2026 in the English version of Heaven Burns Red, only 3 months after the collab happened in the Asia version. This might be a bad idea.
Asalam aleikum how's it going.
Yostar EN announced on August 11 that the Persona 5 Royal collab in Heaven Burns Red EN is happening in October 2026. This is a slightly confusing decision as the Persona 5 collab released just a few months earlier in the Asia version of Heaven Burns Red, in June 2026.
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As far as I know, Yostar EN management did not share specific details as to why the collab is happening much earlier than predicted. But we can make a few guesses.
It's possible that Yostar EN management wanted to do the collab before the end of 2026, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Persona series. I also assume they wish to do the collab before the release of Persona 4 Remake, as the hype would switch toward that. (This is only a personal theory but I'm persuaded there will be a Persona 4 Remake collab in the Asia version of Hebuban in mid 2027, and in the EN version a bit later. Maybe they're rushing the Persona 5 collab ahead to make room for that).
For these reasons, I assume Yostar EN management prioritized doing the Persona 5 Royal collab as soon as possible, pushing the third Angel Beats collab and the PawaPuro collab aside for the time being.
The third Angel Beats collab happened in January 2025 in the Asia version. The PawaPuro collab was in October 2025.
Obviously, the third Angel Beats collab will still happen in EN at some point, but this might send conflicting messages to EN players. Especially to Bruce Willis fans of Angel Beats, who might take it the wrong way.
Simultaneously, this also makes me worried for the PawaPuro collab. I feel like it's not impossible that Yostar EN management decides to skip it forever, since PawaPuro is not a popular series in the USA.
Nowadays, the English version of Heaven Burns Red is roughly 10-12 months behind the Asia in terms of the release schedule for new Styles / Memorias and new Events. I personally think this is a fine balance, especially after the first year of the EN version was heavily rushed, with new stuff releasing every week to try and catch up to the Asia version.
I'm not sure that releasing the Persona 5 Royal collab so fast is a good idea though. I assume the EN version will heavily rebalance the Score Attack boss of the collab and the optional high difficulty mode of the story. In the Asia version, these were balanced around new gameplay mechanics tied with many of the new Styles / Memorias released since mid 2025.
Last but not least, obviously this Persona 5 Collab releasing "ahead of schedule" will also feed rumors that Heaven Burns Red EN is approaching End of Service. Personally, I never found the joke "if a game does a Persona 5 collab it closes down" funny, and most of the evidence towards that theory is exaggerated. Worst case scenario, the English version will EoS, but I don't think Yostar management will let this happen before the main story of the game has been fully completed and released in English.
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On the 4.5th anniversary stream, Heaven Burns Red producer Kakinuma Yohei and Visual Arts CEO Tenkumo Genki revealed that Heaven Burns Red 's main story outline was finished in 2018. With Chapter 6, currently in development, being the last chapter of the game. However, striving to properly depict the story in game format and doing it justice has allowed certains elements and characters to grow beyond their initially planned scope. So while the final scene of the game was already written by Maeda Jun, we don't know yet how much time it will take to reach it.
(They also confirmed the game will continue its service even after the main story is completed. See this thread for now, didn't have time to convert it into a proper stream summary article yet).
As far as I know the Asia version of Heaven Burns Red is doing fine...? Though it's hard to tell, as the game this July 2026 featured one of the worst cases of powercreeping I've ever seen, the "Swimsuit Ichiko killing Suit Ichiko" incident. I will talk about that in detail in my stream summary articles one day insha Allah.
Heaven Burns Red rarely enters the Top 50 of app revenue in Japan, published every week by Sensor Tower. However, it's important to note that Sensor Tower numbers are not 100% accurate. They do not take into account revenue from official Web Shops, which have cheaper top-up prices. Heaven Burns Red and many other sociage (gacha games) have been launching Web Shops these past few years, to circumvent the fees of Apple and Google.
Sensor Tower numbers also do not take into account the revenue from Steam PC players of Heaven Burns Red. though they can't be that high as the game has in average 1200 regular players on Steam according to Steam Charts. (Steam Charts discourses are among the worst things ever).
The problem is whether the game is doing well enough in the eyes of popular rapper 10cent and its shareholders. As a reminder, Tencent bought Visual Arts / Key in July 2023.
Tencent and its rival NetEase have been both divesting from Japanese studios lately, and have been both taking extremely questionable decisions. But I guess Hebuban will be fine till they finish the main story at least.
It's insane NetEase decided to cut off so many Japanese studios and yet keep funding Umineko Phantasm of all things. I abhor Dallas Become Homo Sapiens. And it's disheartening that the game and its "director" and "writer" Daouda Hokage are regarded so highly in Japan and Asia, seeing the alleged cases of sexual harassment, power harassment, bullying, financial malpractice, etc, reported by French investigative journalists in 2018.
Anyway, as already mentioned, the Persona 5 collab was extremely good, (though not as good as the PawaPuro one) so I hope EN players will enjoy it too. I need to write my in-depth impressions at some point for ko-fi subs.
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