Atlus recently released Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for the PlayStation 3 in Japan, and the game sold 89,486 copies in its first week on store shelves.
In comparison, the previous Persona fighting game, Persona 4 Arena, sold 138,286 copies at launch, when it released in 2012. That game was released on both PlayStation 3 (128,485 copies sold) and Xbox 360 (9,801 copies sold).
It goes without saying that Ultimax’s sales are lower than those of Persona 4 Arena’s. Additionally, Japanese sales tracker Media Create reports that over 60% of the new game’s sales came from its limited edition, which indicates that the majority of people buying the game were loyal Persona fans.
The obvious takeaway from this statement is that a portion of the broader audience that purchased Persona 4 Arena opted not to pick Ultimax up. Unfortunately, it looks as though Ultimax didn’t make a convincing enough case for all those people to buy it again, but its opening sales aren’t too bad in comparison to other fighting games.
This leaves us with a couple of questions:
1. Are Atlus actually interested in the fighting game genre as part of their long-term strategy, or is Persona 4 Arena a one-time deal?
2. Persona as a brand didn’t get where it was overnight. Persona 4’s success was built up over the course of several years and a significant marketing effort consisting of updated games, concerts, stage plays, an anime series, an updated anime series, a movie adapted from the anime series, merchandise and more. That said, the Persona brand is in a relatively comfortable place now, so theoretically, it should be easier for Atlus to create spin-offs stemming from Persona 5. Is there going to be a Persona 5 Arena at some point in the future?
