Persona 5 is going to get the Persona 4 treatment, it seems. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 was released back in 2008 for the PS2, and was a massive success. So massive that it created a brand name for itself that spawned several spinoffs. Persona 4 Golden, Persona 4 Arena, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, and Persona 4: Dancing All Night. In other words, a JRPG had supplementary titles in the fighting genre, the rhythm game genre, and a dungeon crawler in the style of Etrian Odyssey. Now we have some proof that Persona 5 is already well underway of following in its predecessor’s footsteps.
7 new Persona domain names were taken out on Atlus’ behalf very recently. P5AG, P5D, P5R, and P5U, as well as P3D, PQ2, and Persona-Dance.
Now we ask the obvious: what new spinoffs will Persona be getting this time? AG could stand for “Arena Golden,” and could be another new fighting game. Persona 4 Arena was a collaboration between Atlus and Arc System Works, known for the BlazBlue and Guilty Gear franchises. If Atlus was working on a new fighting game, they would have to outsource the game design itself to another company like Arc System, since they only handled artwork, music, story and the like in P4A.
P5D and P3D could very well be another dancing spinoff. P4D sold over 300k units, which isn’t bad for a spinoff that literally no one asked for, and probably didn’t take much time or money developing. Now it seems the casts of Persona 3 and 5 will be learning how to disco, and with Persona 5’s 70’s style acid jazz soundtrack, that actually makes sense this time. Perhaps “Persona-Dance” will just end up being its own trademarked franchise within a franchise. It’s already happened before: Persona is a sub-series of Shin Megami Tensei, which is already a subseries of Megami Tensei.
PQ2 must be the sequel to the Nintendo 3DS’ Persona Q, which was a cross-over of the P3 and P4 casts. Will PQ2 be a crossover between the casts of Persona 4 and 5?
P5R and P5U are where the mystery really gets into full gear. Could P5R be a racing game? As silly as that sounds, that would make more sense than a remaster or remake this early after its release.
Regardless of what these all end up being, it’s safe to say that there are several things in the works for Persona 5 fans to look forward to.
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