Atlus have really managed to grow the Persona series in the last few years- what used to be a highly niche franchise selling a few hundred thousand copies with every release now threatens to be a million seller with Persona 5. Persona 5 already broke records in Japan, becoming one of the highest selling console games of the generation there, shipping out 550,000 copies– with its release in the west, it should easily and comfortably cross a million copies shipped.
Meanwhile, the Persona series itself finds itself in a position of power, with 6.9 million units shipped worldwide. This news comes to us from Sega’s newest financial reports (via NeoGAF), which also note that Megami Tensei has sold 7.2 million units worldwide, while Etrian Odyssey has sold 1.5 million units worldwide- meaning Persona is by far Atlus’ biggest brand (given that it has half the number of releases than MegaTen, and that it has been around for about ten years less).
Persona 5, releasing on April 4 in North America and Europe next year courtesy of Deep Silver and Atlus USA, should hopefully push that number ip even further. Everything we have seen of that game so far looks absolutely incredible.