Persona Phenomenon: Beloved Franchise Surpasses 23.5 Million Units Sold, with Persona 5 Royal Leading the Charge

As we’ve pointed out many times before, JRPG fans today have a new series that is taking the genre by storm in both innovation and popularity outside of Japan. Persona, the Shin Megami Tensei spin-off series, started timidly in its early stages until Persona 3 and Persona 4 took off, but didn’t hit the mainstream until the release of Persona 5 in 2026, the last of the titles games to this day. Since then, we’ve seen a myriad of remakes, spin-offs, and final releases, such as Persona 5 Royal, Persona 5 Strikers, the recent Perosna 3 Reload, and even Persona 5 Tactica.

All of this helped to further expand and strengthen the brand, and now Sega has released a quarterly report states that the Persona franchise has sold more than 23.5 million copies worldwide . A milestone for the Japanese role-playing game genre and a clear signal that Sega could invest more resources in the long-awaited sixth chapter of the Atlus game now in development.

While the earnings report is in Japanese, the chart also notes that the Like a Dragon franchise, developed by RGG Studio, has also seen significant growth this year, thanks to Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and perhaps the recent Amazon Prime series Video, although it is too early to assess its impact. Sonic, on the other hand, has also seen stronger growth, although this ratio does not yet reflect the main release of Sonic. It would be interesting to follow both series closely in a single report.

The core team behind the Persona series worked on last month’s release of Metaphor: ReFantazio, and we don’t know if the studio has Persona 6 in the works. But considering they’ve released three great games this year alone, we’ll probably know more about what they have in store for us soon, perhaps at The Game Awards?