Persona franchise surpasses 10 million copies sold

It has taken nearly a quarter of a century, but the Persona series has hit 10 million copies sold. That includes all games in the series: the main Persona role-playing adventures as well as spinoffs like dungeon-crawler Persona Q2.

Developer Atlus revealed this milestone in a blog post on its official Japanese Persona website today. It also revealed that it is planning to hold an event to reveal more about the upcoming Persona 5 Royal, which is revamped version of the Persona 5 RPG. Royal is due out for PlayStation 4 on October 31, and it is certainly going to add to Persona’s total sales going forward.

In its 2018 investor report, publisher Sega Sammy confirmed that Persona had reached 9.3 million copies shipped life-to-date. That was from October of last year. Since then, the company launched Persona Q2 for the Nintendo 3DS in November in Japan. Persona Q2 then launched worldwide in June. That was likely one of the bigger contributors to pushing the series over 10 million copies sold.

Persona is a growing franchise for Sega and Atlus. The first game debuted in 1996 as a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei RPGs. But the franchise broke into the consciousness of Western gamers primarily with Persona 3 on the PlayStation 3 and Persona 3: Golden on the PlayStation Vita. Since then, the series has found a larger audience.

Persona 5, for example, has surpassed 2.7 million copies sold all on its own. Now, if only Sega and Atlus would get it together and release Persona 5 or any of the main entries in the franchise on Nintendo Switch, it would likely see another big spike in its accumulated sales total.