Atlus will add rollback netcode to Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. It is confirmed for the PS4 and PC versions. The company and Arc System Works opted to improve its online performance through the implementation of the protocol, now preferred for fighters who play online matches. The team noted it was considering the idea back in December 2021.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Producer Kazuhisa Wada delivered the rollback netcode announcement via a brief message, which was then posted by Atlus West’s Twitter account.
#P4AU Producer Wada-san has a very exciting message! 💥
Rollback Netcode comes to Persona 4 Arena Ultimax this summer for Steam and PS4! #P25th pic.twitter.com/hduHjRTmZl
— Official ATLUS West (@Atlus_West) February 28, 2022
In the announcement, Wada noted that the addition of rollback wouldn’t be instant. At the game’s re-launch in March 2022, the standard netcode will still be the default. The PS4 and PC patches to add rollback will be deployed in Summer 2022.
For the uninitiated, netcode is basically a way for two network-connected players’ platforms to talk to each other over the internet. In fighting games, the two main forms these strategies take are split into delay-based and rollback. As fighting games rely heavily on ensuring that players are synced up and are able to register their inputs correctly, various netcode styles are of high importance. Delay-based netcode is comparatively simpler to to implement, but is particularly bad at compensating for differences in network quality. In situations where bad connections or long distances between players introduces input lag, delay-based games can feel worse to play online. Rollback netcode, when it is introduced to Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, will replace this with one based on prediction. It will use a system to guess a player’s input and roll back frames when desynchronizing is detected. This approach is said to result in a much smoother experience, one able to hide the “lag” that inevitably affects online play.
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is available on the PS3, but will release for the Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PC on March 17, 2022. Its rollback patch will arrive in Summer 2022 for the PS4 and PC.
