Sponsored By

Joker and the Phantom Thieves can still draw in a big audience.

Justin Carter, Contributing Editor

December 1, 2022

2 Min Read
Promo art for Atlus' Persona 5 Royal.

According to Atlus (translated via Google), Persona 5 Royal has sold 1 million copies on current-generation hardware in physical and digital storefronts. For a re-release of a three-year-old game that came to PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PC in late October, that's pretty impressive. 

Persona 5 Royal originally released on the PlayStation 4 in October 2019 in Japan, followed by a wide release in March the following year. Atlus further stated that Persona 5 Royal has now sold 3.3 million worldwide units between its first release and its current-gen reawakening. 

Since the release of Persona 5 in 2017 became a sales juggernaut, Atlus has turned it into its own franchise. Atlus reported that including the spinoffs Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 5: Dancing All Night, the sub-series as a whole sold 8.3 million global units.

In addition to those titles, Atlus has kept the franchise active with an anime adaptation of the base Persona 5 game. It also allowed its lead protagonist Joker to be a guest character in Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which helped introduce him to a new audience that otherwise may not have heard of the character of the game he's attached to.

For the entire Persona series as a whole, sales have come at 16.8 million units.

On PC, the success of Persona 5 Royal was well-documented by Steam. Towards the end of October, Valve reported that Royal was one of the most-played games on Steam Deck for the month. 

Sega said during its financial update in October that it would continue to put its attention on remakes and remasters to keep certain franchises and player bases active. Persona 5 is intended to be followed up with remasters for Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 Portable, which means audiences will be plenty sated until the eventual next full-fledged entry in the series.

About the Author(s)

Justin Carter

Contributing Editor, GameDeveloper.com

A Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don't ask him about how much gum he's had, because the answer will be more than he's willing to admit.

Daily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inbox

You May Also Like