The hottest story of this holiday week has been that of Persona 5 R, a seemingly new version of Atlus' beloved 2017 JRPG Persona 5. After multiple leaks surrounding the title have come out over the past few days, recently, yet another new piece of information has emerged that seems to further prove the imminent reveal of Persona 5 R.

As spotted over on ResetEra by user Atheerios, Atlus has now bought an HTTPS security ticket for the website domain "P5R.jp" as of yesterday, December 26. This is one of the final steps that are commonly taken shortly before many websites go live. You can see an image showing the ticket's purchase attached at the bottom of the page.

Furthermore, when trying to visit P5R.jp for yourself, you'll find that you are greeted with a 403 error message rather than a 404 indicator. This is worth noting because it now confirms that the website has been assigned an IP address and is currently being blocked from the public. A 404 message indicates that the site you were trying to reach couldn't be accessed whatsoever, while 403 just means that it's currently just blocked off. This proves that the P5R.jp definitely leads to a real website and isn't just Atlus simply squatting on a domain.

This new information combined with this week's earlier leak involving multiple new Persona website domains seems to all but confirm that Persona 5 R is indeed real. Judging from the purchase of the recent certificate as well, it seems like Atlus is also entering the final stages of pushing this website live, which seems to indicate an official announcement for the game could be coming very soon.

It's also worth noting that as of this morning, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai appeared in a new video with Atlus talking about his own history with the Persona series. This combined with the fact that Joker will be coming to Smash Ultimate as a DLC fighter shows that both Atlus and Nintendo have each been cross-promoting one another quite a bit lately and seems to add believability that Persona 5 R could be a game that lands on the Switch. Much like when Persona 4 Golden came to the PS Vita, the Persona series does have a history with coming to handheld platforms, after all.

At this point, all we can do is wait to hear more from Atlus directly about Persona 5 R, but it seems like that information could be arriving sooner than you might think. As we speculated previously, the game's official reveal could come as soon as December 30 when the Persona 5 anime special Dark Sun will debut in Japan. It'd make sense to then reveal this new title alongside that anime, but this all remains to be seen until a few days from now.

We'll keep you posted if there are any more major developments in this ongoing story. As a final note, keep in mind that none of this is officially confirmed to be real just yet, but this is about as certain as you can be about a game's existence before an actual announcement. Still, best to keep your own expectations in check until we know more from Atlus directly.