Last week, Persona 4: Golden released in Japan to a great debut of 137,000 copies sold. That’s a far higher opening week than Persona 3 Portable, which debuted at 94,000 copies in 2009 on the PSP.
Sales tracker, Media Create, provided some additional information about Persona 4: Golden’s sales today—the game sold through 84.11% of its initial shipment in its first week. Of those 137,000 first-week sales, pre-orders represented 66.6%.
By comparison, 56% of Persona 3 Portable’s 94,000 first-week sales were from pre-orders. The increase of both sales and pre-orders from P3P to Golden is likely due to the amount of exposure that both Persona 4 and the Persona brand overall have received in recent years, drawing more fans to the series through concerts, anime and manga.
Here’s some more food for thought—Persona 4 on the PlayStation 2 sold 192,000 copies in its opening week in 2008. With the increase in brand awareness, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Persona 5 debuting within the 250-300k range.
Media Create also provided a sell-through number for Lollipop Chainsaw. The PS3 version, with 53,347 copies sold, got through 76.76% of its shipment. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 version, which sold 14,422 copies, sold through 76.91% of its shipment.
