Things are really looking up for Atlus. Well, things are always looking up for the JRPG developer, as they are arguably the front runner of the genre as a whole thanks to the success of smash hits such as the Persona series, but always in the shadow of the Persona series is the Shin Megami Tensei mainline franchise, ironic considering Persona is an offshoot of Shin Megami Tensei. But maybe the older brother still has some fight left in him after all, as Shin Megami Tensei V as well as its Vengeance expansion has sold a total of 1.6 million units, a great number for the franchise.
As stated in the tweet above, Vengeance itself sold a very impressive 500,000 units in just 3 days after its release. It seems as though the Shin Megami Franchise has legs outside of the Persona branch after all, or maybe Atlus’ name just means that much in the JRPG community. Though no doubt the fact that Vengeance came out and was available for all consoles contributed to these fantastic numbers.
JRPGs in general are becoming more and more popular as a whole, as stated multiple times the Persona franchise is basically guaranteed to break the bank any time a new title is released, or even an old title considering how much the Persona 3 Reload remake made. That this success is trickling down to what many would have considered a more niche title in the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series is great news.
Hopefully moving forward though, other competitors are able to give Atlus a bit of competition, as we don’t want them to have a monopoly on the genre. For now though, let’s enjoy that so many people are playing a mainline Shin Megami Tensei, and that hopefully this means that we’ll be getting more SMT goodness in the future.