The series consists of twenty games, not counting re-releases and mobile games.
Persona 3 Reload, a remake of
Persona 3 (2006), was launched in 2024 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, making it the first main entry in the franchise to both receive a worldwide simultaneous release, as well as the first to be available on non-PlayStation formats from launch. In a quarterly earnings report from November 2023, SEGA Sammy president Haruki Atami suggested that all future
Persona games going forward would follow a similar release and availability cadence in order to meet company expectations of selling at least 5 million units in a new game's first year. Due to the company not having a European branch, Atlus has generally given publishing duties to other third-party publishers with branches in Europe. This frequently results in a gap between North American and European release dates ranging from a few months to a year or more. For
Persona 3, Atlus gave publishing duties to
Koei. For
Persona 4, European publishing was handled by
Square Enix.
Persona 4 Arena was originally published in Europe by Zen United after a long delay, but the digital rights were eventually returned to Atlus, resulting in the game being removed from PSN. Atlus ended up re-publishing the digital PlayStation version in Europe. They had previously digitally published the PSP port of
Persona in Europe and Australia.
Arena Ultimax was published in Europe by Sega, who had recently purchased Atlus' parent company. It was speculated that this could lead to a new trend that would shorten the release gap between North America and Europe. A regular publishing partner was Ghostlight, whose relations with Atlus went back to the European release of
Nocturne. A more recent partner was
NIS America, which published
Persona 4 Golden,
Persona Q, and
Dancing All Night. Atlus' partnership with NIS America ended in 2016, with NIS America citing difficulties with the company since its acquisition by Sega as reasons for the split. As part of their statement, NIS America said that Atlus had become "very picky" about European partners, selecting those which could offer the highest minimal sales guarantee on their products. Sega of America and Atlus USA eventually entered into a partnership with European publishing company
Deep Silver to publish multiple games in the region, including
Persona 5.
Localization The localizations for the
Persona series are generally handled by translator Yu Namba of
Atlus USA, who also handles localization for multiple other
Megami Tensei games. Another prominent staff member was Nich Maragos, who worked with Namba on multiple
Persona games until moving to
Nintendo of America prior to 2015. The localization of
Persona was handled by a small team, which put a lot of pressure on them as they needed to adjust the game for Western audiences: the changes implemented included altering names, changing the appearance of characters, and removing numerous cultural references. An entire alternate main quest was also removed. After
Persona, it was decided that future
Persona games should be as faithful as possible to their original releases. Namba's first localization project for the series was
Eternal Punishment. For the release of
Innocent Sin, there was a debate over whether to release it, as it contained potentially controversial content including allusions to
Nazism. In the end, due to staff and resource shortages,
Innocent Sin was passed over for localization in favor of its sequel
Eternal Punishment. Later, when the company developed the PSP ports, the team released the ports of
Persona and
Innocent Sin overseas so fans attracted by
Persona 3 and
4 would be able to easily catch up with the rest of the series. The localization for
Persona was completely redone, reverting all the previous altered content and restoring all previously cut content. The port of
Eternal Punishment was not localized due to "unusual circumstances", so the company released the original version on PSN instead. For the localizations of
Persona 3 and
4, the team incorporated as much of the original content as possible, such as using Japanese honorifics and keeping the game's currency as
yen rather than changing it. As a general rule, they incorporate cultural elements from the original versions unless they would not be understood by the player, such as with certain jokes. Nevertheless, some changes had to be made. In one instance, the character Mitsuru Kirijo was originally an English speaker, but her second language for the localized version was changed to French due to her cultured appearance. School tests also needed to be changed due to similar language-based issues. The Social Links were originally called but this was changed as the word "Community" had a very specific meaning in English. The new name was inspired by the way the character Igor made reference to the concept using words such as "society" and "bonds". Some in-game
Easter egg references were also changed: in
Persona 3 references to the larger
Megami Tensei series by a character in an in-game
MMORPG were changed to reference earlier
Persona games, while mentions of a fictional detective in
Persona 4 were altered to reference the Kuzunoha family from
Eternal Punishment and the
Devil Summoner series. Character names have also needed adjustment, such as the stage name of
Persona 4 character Rise Kujikawa, and the way characters referred to each other was adjusted to appeal more to a western audience.
Persona 5 was also localized in this fashion. The localized English names of games have also been altered. The banner title for
Persona was changed from
Megami Ibunroku to
Revelations, principally because the team thought the latter name sounded "cool". The
Revelations title was removed for
Innocent Sin and
Eternal Punishment. After the successful release of
Nocturne, the "
Shin Megami Tensei" moniker was added to the series title to help with Western marketing. This has not been the case for some games:
Persona 4 Arena original title,
Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena, was shortened as it sounded "awkward", and the "
Shin Megami Tensei" moniker was dropped as it would have made the title too long, which has been applied to every game in the series since. The same change was made for
Persona 4 Golden and
Persona 5 Royal, with the team dropping "
The" that was in the Japanese title because it would have sounded "odd" in English-speaking regions. ==Reception==