Along with the announcement of next week’s Persona 5 Royal celebration event, Atlus has announced today that the Persona series has reached 10 million copies sold since its debut 23 years ago in 1996.
The Persona series’ start was with the release of Revelations: Persona on September 20, 1996 for the PlayStation. Since then, Persona 5 has been the most successful release in the series with 2.7 million copies shipped worldwide as of April 2019, after its original release on September 15, 2016 in Japan. Persona 5 was also the biggest debut for the series in North America, ranking second place in April 2017’s NPD sales results.
The Sega Sammy annual report released in October 2018 had confirmed that the Persona series had reached 9.3 million units shipped worldwide (both physical and digital). The Persona series has therefore shipped 700k units more 10 months later, with the release of Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth (which debuted with 80k copies sold in Japan) being a major contributing factor.
This milestone of 10 million copies sold comes before the launch of Persona 5 Royal on October 31st in Japan, which will push this number further. Following P5R will be the Team Omega co-developed Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers, with no announced release window.
Check out our detailed graphic showcasing the Japanese sales numbers for the entirety of the Persona series sales in Japan, as of January 2019. In a November 2016 interview with MCV UK, Atlus Managing Director and Executive Producer Naoto Hiraoka stated that the sales ratio of Atlus titles was approximately the same between Japan and the West, a rare case in Japanese-based publishing.