The Persona franchise has reached 22 million copies sold

The franchise Persona, ‘spin off’ de Shin Megami Tensei, debuted in September 1996 with the game Revelations: Persona. This first installment reached a total of 447,438 copies sold worldwide. However, the figure for the first installment would not expire until the launch of Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 next to P3 FES for PlayStation 2 in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Since, both titles together accumulated more than 617,563 games sold around the world. However, at that time—despite sales and good reception—the franchise was still considered niche in the industry.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 It was released in 2008 and managed to surpass the numbers of the third installment. So, for a long time, Atlus let the franchise rest by releasing reissues for portable consoles and ‘spin offs’ of other genres such as rhythm and fighting. All of these with a good reception, but not abysmal. But Atlus never thought that in 2016—eight years after the release of P4—the fifth installment called solo Persona 5 It would raise the sales and popularity of this franchise to the point of eclipsing its original saga.

The phenomenon of Persona 5

The fifth installment of Persona literally took the world by surprise and as a result this game reached a total of 7.297.000 units sold throughout the world, of which only 1,389,257 belong to Japanese territory. This didn’t stop here. Since, the following ‘spin off’ starring the phantom thieves at heart had sales that exceeded one million units. Thanks to this, the newly launched Persona 3: Reload has managed to reach one million games sold. This less than a month after its launch.

22.6 million units sold globally

This growing popularity of the franchise has made Atlus not only pay more attention to it, but they are also celebrating the global sales of the entire saga since its launch. So as part of this celebration Atlus has shared a new trailer for Persona 3: Reload. This new trailer for the ‘remake’ of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 It is a clear tribute to the first trailer of the title that debuted on PlayStation 2.

In June 2023, the franchise Persona had reached 17.7 million copies sold. Since then, Atlus released Persona 5 Tactics y Persona 3 Reload. The latter managed to achieve the title of the fastest-selling Atlus game in the company’s history. Now, thanks to these figures we can only wait for Atlus to launch Metaphor: ReFantazio so that we finally know what the long-awaited sixth installment of this ‘spin off’ of MegaTen that has managed to conquer the Western public.