Persona 5 Has Achieved A Huge Record
Persona 5, a 2016 role-playing game developed by P-Studio and published by Altus, has achieved a massive franchise record. It’s still far away from this year’s highest-grossing release, but having more than 8.3 million sales to date is definitely impressive by any measure. Of course, these figures were spearheaded by the release of Persona 5 Royal for soon-to-be-ex PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox consoles, and Nintendo Switch.
According to Destructoid, Altus disclosed these figures following the game’s release on the current-gen consoles, which accounts for approximately one million sales for the past month or so. The original Persona 5 has released in 2016 and has sold some 3.3 million copies. But when you add branded titles like Persona 5, Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, Stalkers, and so on, the total number rounds up to a grand total of 8.3 million copies. These are pretty fantastic sales figures for a Japanese-inspired role-playing franchise, which speaks volumes about its quality.
However, since we’re already counting, the entire Persona franchise has sold over 16.8 million copies overall. Admittedly, it can’t really measure up to the giants such as Assassin’s Creed, whose DLC dropped an entire week earlier, but it’s still an impressive number, considering that some games never reach those metrics. Of course, considering that the latest installment of Persona managed to spawn several spin-offs and considering that the previous game even had its own PC port version, it’s actually quite clear that the franchise is set to run and run.
Of course, if there’s content, there are those willing to consume it, and the popular JPRG has found a massive audience. It was originally released in 2016 for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, after which it was enhanced and re-released for PlayStation 4 by Altus in Japan and Sega — whose Sonic Frontiers is currently struggling — worldwide. Persona 5 Royal, the enhanced edition re-released in 2019, was re-released once again in October this year for the current generation consoles, where it made a jump to Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch — despite the previous-gen nature of the latter.
The game has won several awards and has been cited as one of the best role-playing games of all time, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with RPG titles of greater renown, like Diablo and Baldur’s Gate 3, which finally got its official release date. Of course, it also spawned an animated series long before League of Legends’ animated adaptation Arcane came out and before Cyberpunk 2077 even released — let alone spawned an animated Netflix series.
The entire Persona 5 series is part of a much more massive Shin Megami Tensei franchise, which consists of several gaming series of various genres, including tactical role-playing, as well as action role-playing and MMO elements. Despite never reaching the heights of all aforementioned gaming titles, the Shin Megami Tensei has a cult following, with fandom and critics praising the game’s artistic direction, challenging gameplay, music, etc. Of course, it also raised some controversies, but which game from the Land of the Rising Sun hasn’t — just look at the buzz regarding fully-clothed Bayonetta.
