#the fact that they released strikers and royal at the same time??? are you guys idiots??? what the fuck???

[obstinaterixatrix]

I was talking to pita about the good old foxskull days and I gotta say. I hate atlus. apparently there was a mass exodus of jp yusuke fans after royal because some of yusuke’s stuff was given to sumire AND there was more emphasis on comedy relief AND the 3rd semester dream palace whatever did some weird characterization stuff (though it could be kind of explained away by the teacher’s misinterpretation of yusuke) AND apparently with the retranslation of p5 yusuke’s voice (diction not va) is different. I hate atlus and its 50 billion iterations of the same character, the goddamn base game vs manga vs anime (especially egregious) vs royal bullshit pisses me off so much

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

so apparently P5R just usurped P4G and is now the best selling Persona remake/remaster/whatever; how do ya feel?

Dunno why I didn’t see this, phone’s not giving me updates it seems. ;w; Anyway.... Short Answer: Meh, I really don’t care, I’m more interested in Scramble/Strikers numbers. Long answer tho....(gonna be long, not a rant just I’ve had A LOT of thoughts about sales numbers since P3/5D’s and PQ2′s releases).

I’m not surprised, I mean it’s a remake on a mainline console, combined the fact that it was popular too (I’ll come back to this when I talk about the other Persona games but for now put a pin in that). But there are two things I’m more interested in, 1) P5R’s lifetime sales, and 2) Scramble/Striker’s numbers.

1) Will possibly show how many newcomers we’ve retained. And I’m interested in that because....P5 sold a few million right? If Atlus can retain that that’d be amazing! We won’t know till the Western releases tho. But if it doesn’t, and sells say.....as much as P4G’s life time sales, then....all P5 did was retain the hardcore original audience, it didn’t win over as many new people as we thought it did. Which isn’t a failure, but it’s.....a crude way to say it (sorry I just woke up words are hard), it’s that P5 isn’t as really as hot shit as we all thought it was (and it probably just sold well due to timing and crazy marketing). 

2) What I REALLY want to know is P5S’ sales tho, even more than P5R’s. Since I think that might indicate P5′s standing if it’s as much as a fan favorite as P5 vanilla′s sales show. And it might be the first time we have a clearish answer without any other possibility being the reason for sales numbers. Lemme explain, P5R might do well because is a mainline game instead of a spinoff (but it could do meh compared to P3P and P4G in terms of lifetime sales due to the new comers not wanting to rebuy the game for whatever reason: Same console [which is a double edge sword, PS4 is popular but also people might not want to buy the same game for the same console twice], not worth the price, not enough new changes in their eyes). P5D did poorly, but is it because it was just bad, was it cause of the shitty DLC practices, was it because it didn’t have a lot of content (aka no real plot like P4D)? We don’t know. PQ2? Was it cause it was bad, was it cause it was released on a dying console (as opposed to PQ1 being released at the peak popularity of that console), was it on a console that P5 was it released on, was it cause it featured P3/4 cast and it was aimed at P5 audiences who have no idea who those people are? We don’t really know (this one is probably the dying console tho, which means could it have done well/better if released on the Switch instead?). Did both do bad cause they weren’t really sequels (both technically take place during P5 so yeah)? But P5S? It’s releasing on two very popular consoles, and it’s set as a sequel, so far doesn’t look like there’s a lot of scummy practices going on, actually looks like it has content (so if there are some scummy DLC practices, at least that’s not the ONLY thing you can think about, like with P3/5D). It has A LOT going for it in terms of a spinoff, that even non hardcore/new fans can get into. And I want to know what kind of impact P5 left on the fanbase as a whole and so far it’s not doing so hot spinoff wise (maybe anime too, when the anime was still in the middle of it’s run it wasn’t doing as hot as P4′s first anime or P3′s movies....at least sales wise I found, but that was in the middle maybe it got better), merch sales are probably doing fine tho (since they keep announcing new things). So to me P5′s......all over the gd place. 

tldr; I think P5S will show us a decent idea on how P5 as a series is doing compared to P3/4, it started off strong with it’s main game but has struggled with it’s spinoffs which might be because of other reasons than people just being “meh” on it. P5R will be a good chance to see how many people stayed. 

Now let’s look at the other games. You should know, considering hurdles P5 didn’t have (except maybe P3P, but on the other hand it probs could’ve excelled more on a home console), the modern day Persona games (Tadashi/Old games got screwed and I’ll explain but it’s probably for the same reason as PQ2, or at least for P2EP) did well despite these hurdles, well both original and remakes but I’mma focus on the remakes (all you need to know about P3 Vanilla and FES and P4 vanilla is that they were both released post PS3 and/or towards the end PS2′s life cycle and still did great).

Now P3P probably had the easiest, released during a very popular time for the PSP, and it ended up selling better than EITHER of it’s two PS2 counterparts Life to date (now if you cheated and combined Vanilla and FES, then yeah P3P sold 80,000 less than those two/all their versions, but that’s 2V1 and it’s still amazing how well it did).There was def an uptick in sales, maybe it was all newcomers or maybe it was half old and half new people, but it still resulted in more people buying it than it’s original (which is why I still wanted to talk about it despite it not having the same hurdles as P4G). 

P4G however, that’s where the biggest hurdle comes in (and why I really bring this up). The Vita. A console that sold peanuts compared to the PSP, PS2, PS3, and PS4. No, less than peanuts. 10/15 Million compared to the 80-150 million the other 4 ranged from. I mean yeah a million is a lot, but now you need to market to those million, no, you need to get people to BUY this console first (it was released roughly when the Vita dropped). You need to convince people to ditch their PSP, for a console that isn’t backwards compatible, for this semi-obscure Japanese title. But god damn it did, it almost got all it’s sales from the PS2 back. Hell it exceeded it’s original run L-t-D if you don’t count “The Best” re-releases (Vanilla’s cheaper re-release sold more than P4G’s cheaper re-release). I don’t know if these are also new people, or all hardcore fans, but it did really damn well! It got people hyped and it got people to buy this game AND console! (tho I wouldn’t be surprised if it was at the sacrifice of poor P2:EP, may you rest in peace ;w;). And that was a BIG hurdle for it to overcome! 

Like P3P and P4G really make me wonder how well they’d do with a real remake on the PS4/PS5. Like a port would probs do well, but imagine if they actually improved the graphics and changed/added new things, I think it’d sell about as well as P5 vanilla. 

P5R’s biggest hurdle is justifying itself as a full price game remake on the same console. But like FES could do that (so I think P5R’s outlook is fine, no real hurdles like P4G had to go through)....and just for fun cause I hate myself (jk I dunno I just wanna see if I can take a guess at JPN’s possible sales based off of numbers of past re-releases). And FES’ first week compared to it’s vanilla is 10% higher than Royal, but Royal has more units sold obvie, FES sold about 80% the total the vanilla did, Royal did 70%, L-t-D for FES was 78% not counting cheaper-re-releases, 82% counting re-releases...but I think that’s because P3 Vanilla didn’t have a re-release cause of FES. If I use that as a base.......P5R’s numbers (going off of the graphs from Personacentral like this one and of course the P5R one, which I think are all Japanese sales). If P5R follows a similar patter to FES’ sales %.... I’ll give P5R 72%-82% of Vanilla’s sales (including the cheaper re-release), and we’re looking at maybe L-t-D sales of Royal ranging from about 334,955 to 381,476 units sold. 

If Royal follows a similar pattern to P4G however (cause P5R is more similar to FES and P4G, I’ll do P4G’s too for fun, but I won’t do P3P’s). So there are two life to date numbers, one before factoring in P4/P4G’s re-releases and one after. Before P4G sold about 111% more than vanilla, after re-releases it sold about 96% of Vanilla’s total units. So a low ball and high ball of Royal with P4G’s % would be.....446,606 to 516,389 units sold. 

So combining those two together, I predict (aka this is a theory that I wanted to do for fun for WHATEVER reason, made by someone that JUST woke up and trying to get my math out as quickly as possible, maybe if I have time next week I’ll go back and check my work....I’m very busy this week sadly ;w;) P5R’s L-t-D (pre- cheaper re-release)sales to be somewhere to be 334,955 to 516,389 for Japan. 

But that’s Japan, Japan it feels like they’re more willing to re-buy games on the same console, the West might not be as inclined tho (if we re-buy something, it’s because it’s on a different console). So while P5R could sell about as well as Vanilla did in Japan, I dunno so much about the west. 

tldr; P5R did about as well as I thought in Japan, but not sure about the West. Some number predictions for P5R. If P5R does poorly in the West it could be because it’s was released on the PS4 instead of a different system. P5S I think will give us a better idea on how P5 is doing as a franchise compared to P4.

(also I should note, I prefer vanilla P4 over P4G, there’s some good stuff in P4G, but 1) I prefer Tracey Rooney as Chie, I prefer her down to earth approach more, and 2) there’s some things in P4G that ruins my enjoyment and outweighs the new positive stuff. I like all the remakes barring the guy who directed P4G/P5R, I haven’t finalized my thoughts on P5R yet tho. I do like Kasumi more than Marie tho just on a personality level, still thinking over how they handled her tho. I will say P5R has a lot of gameplay improvements that fixed a lot of gameplay gripes I had so like that’s all I feel like saying/can say about P5R, gameplays better!).