Persona 3 Reload Dev Explains Its Missing Female Protagonist And If We’ll Get Persona 1 And 2 Remakes
The Persona series is currently in an interesting place. Following the release of Persona 5 back in 2016, the series has grown exponentially more popular. Back in December 2023, Atlus confirmed the Persona 5 series–which includes the original game, Royal, Strikers, Tactica, and Dancing in Starlight–has sold more than 10 million copies. When Persona 3 Reload launched earlier this year, it sold over 1 million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling Persona game to date. Compare that with Persona 4 at 2.5 million copies sold–1 million of those from the last year–and you can see the franchise’s incredible momentum.
Suffice to say, there’s never been more eyes on the Persona series, and this makes the studio’s current transition and trajectory particularly interesting. For the past eight years, the studio has solely released remakes, ports, and additional content pertaining to the series’ existing entries. Even more notable, however, is that the team working on these projects (Atlus’ P-Studio) has also seen an exodus of long-time Persona developers, with Katsura Hashino, Shigenori Soejima, Yuichiro Tanaka, Azusa Kido, Yujiro Kosaka, and Yasuhiro Akimoto all leaving the Persona series to start a new team and work on the upcoming fantasy RPG Metaphor: ReFantazio. I can’t help but wonder, then, what’s next for P-Studio and the Persona series?
I recently had the opportunity to delve into this with Atlus’ Kazuhisa Wada, a long-time producer and director at the studio who now leads P-Studio following Hashino’s departure. Though the conversation focused on the studio’s next release, Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis, I was also able to gain some insight into the future of the Persona series, if we’ll one day get Persona 1 and 2 remakes, and why we the team can’t seem to stop releasing deluxe editions of its games.