The Shin Megami Tensei and Persona franchises may be about to hit the scene, but this time the SEGA subsidiary is taking a bit of a risk.
2024 has been a good year for Atlus. Persona 3 Reload, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, and Metaphor: ReFantazio all posted great sales and reviews, but of those, the third was the one to be most pleased with, as a brand new IP was able to deliver a stellar performance for the team, while Shin Megami Tensei and Persona can essentially sell themselves on name recognition alone.
After that, it will be hard to call 2025 as good, but it looks like Atlus has some big projects after that. It is customary for Japanese developers to announce their ambitions for the coming year at the end of the year. According to developer Yosuke Uda, he is still working on Persona 5: The Phantom X and trying to support the studio beyond this project, which means that other Persona games are in the pipeline. It’s clearly Persona 6, because he also said that Atlus is working on a title that they want to announce as soon as possible. This is obviously Persona 6 as well…
Atsushi Nomura, who is also working on Persona, said that he is working on a game that he will try to reveal at a more appropriate time, and asked fans to be patient. So we probably won’t have to wait long. According to another Persona developer, Naoya Maeda, we can expect an exciting new experience in this new game. Finally, Kazuhisa Wada, Creative Producer and Director of the Persona team, says that they will be navigating the ship carefully because there are many large projects to keep on track, and the overall weight of the projects is huge… and any missteps could come at a heavy cost.
What we get out of this is that Atlus seems to be taking a risk. Maybe it will work out for them, maybe it won’t… but hopefully it won’t turn into a casino deal for them!
