Persona 5 Continues Being Niche, Tops UK Sales Charts

Launched on Tuesday on PS4 and PS3 and receiving glowing reviews, ‘Persona 5’ from Atlus/Deep Silver debuts at No1. It is the first J-RPG (Japanese RPG) to debut at the top of the All Formats Chart since ‘Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch’ back in W5 2013 (‘Final Fantasy XV’ launched at No2, but it had to contend with ‘FIFA 17’). It is by far the biggest launch for a ‘Persona’ title and the first ever All Formats No1 for developer and publisher Atlus.

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But I was assured by none other than System Wars posters that Persona is niche, and Japanese games don't sell, and that Persona 5 will be irrelevant outside of a few fans :(

In all seriousness, I am so happy that the game is selling so well- it's a wonderful game, and it deserves all the success that it can get. Japanese gaming stays winning this year.

I am surprised to see Ghost Recon up there still. Bulletstorm, lol.

Nier Automata gone. The Last Guardian gone. Nioh gone. Halo Wars 2 gone.

Cool! The games are apparently terrific so I'm always glad when that's rewarded.

GTAV, still selling away 4 years later. Utterly nuts.

I am surprised to see how stubbornly Zelda stays in the Top 10- even Horizon has dropped out by now.

Now about you getting Persona 5 for yourself :P

Are Switches still hard to come by?

Congrats to fans of the series, and on a side note.....fantastic to see Forza Horizon 3 up there still, never thought it would come to this when I played the First Horizon.

Yeah

My understanding is that Horizon 3 is an excellent racing game- it almost made me buy an Xbox One myself last year, Ij can certainly understand its lasting appeal, especially given that good non Mario Kart racing games are so hard to come by these days.

I know that Zelda is on Wii U, but I imagine if Switch was more widely available, Zelda could still be number one.

@charizard1605: It's my next disc game for PS4 ;) Just got a few digital ones to play first!

It seems that Mario Kart 7 > Nioh

@kvally: Possibly, yes. Interestingly enough, Breath of the Wild has not held the #1 position in the UK sales charts at all so far

I have my eyes on you >.> ;P

Yes and no, UK has some. Shopto have loads.

Nice.. cant wait to play it. its sitting here waiting on me to finish up NieR Automata

Slow month is a slow month ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The sales have been really good so far

If it stays in the top 10 in it's second week, we can talk. Part of being a "niche" title is your base buying the game launch week, and then the sales fall off the face of the earth afterwards. I would bet it will fall out of the top 10 the next chart, and then be off the list altogether by June.

I watched my brother in law play the game for a while, and man is the music great. I have no time to play a game like this, but now I've got the itch based on the soundtrack alone. It's the biggest draw to jrpgs for me. The storyline is usually the repellent.

Why have you forsaken us Horizon? You were the chosen one!

@kbfloyd

Time for some new goalposts ehh?

cause everyones bailing for P5 as they should

@aigis: They buying that Ghost Recon, fantastic game. I've been watching my brother play.

Good news, the story in Persona games is often considered to be the best part of the experience!

And no, any game that sells 1.5 million units globally - that Persona has done - is no longer niche. Unless you want to relegate most video games as niche by definition, in which case, sure? But Persona has stopped being niche, thanks in no small part to Persona 4/Golden's success.

@charizard1605: Playstation has so little amount of decent games that people are buying Japanese niche games, obviously...

But Persona 5 has access to a userbase of over 130 million gamers. They are sitting at less than a 1% attach rate. Not to mention the game came out in Japan 7 months ago.

Splatoon, a game that came out in 2015, outsold Persona 5 in Japan in 2016. Was the Wii U a niche console in Japan? There were more PS4s in Japan than Wii Us in 2016, and yet a year old game outsold it "the best selling Atlus title to date"...

On a less instigating note, I do have P4G on Vita. I've tried again and again to get into it. I do see the draw however. But P5 just seems to ooze style and it seems very unique. Could you see a person that couldn't get into 4 enjoying 5?

And Horizon has been on the top 10 charts for a month now and Persona 5 is the next big thing on the PlayStation console.

lol ghost recon

And bodes well for the green light of an assumed Persona 6 sometimes down the road. Not that there was ever any doubt. There was no doubt about it indeed. I'm in my thirties, so I assume my Daughter will get to play P6 when it comes out and I'll be long dead :(

UK'ers sure do love GTA... is there nothing that takes it from the top5? Jesus...

depends on what you didnt like about 4

Good sales for Persona. Microsoft should have games like this on xbox. I zero interest personally,but i don't speak for every xbox fan.

@aigis: It's a pretty cool game bro, you'd love it. Could be GOTY contender.

They would if they could sell a console in Japan. But Xbox has no Japanese exclusives, so Japan won't buy an Xbox. Developers won't make Japanese exclusives, so nobody in Japan will buy an Xbox. It's too bad that Platinum Games canceled the Scalebound game, Japan might have bought 10 Xbox One's that week.

@iandizion713: how many hours have you watched so far?

They were out of stock everywhere over here for a few week but I just got mine delivered last week so I think stock are okay at the moment. And Amazon are showing they are in stock.

MS took a shot at Japan in the early days of X360. Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Tales Of Vesparia, Eternal Sonata, and secured Final Fantasy. Japan didn't really care though, so MS abandoned it.

Sad but oh well. No harm in trying.

@goldenelementxl: why the heck does Splatoon keep being brought up? I didn't call Splatoon niche. I'm not calling Persona 5 niche.

The rest of your arguments are irrelevant- by those standards, ALL games are niche except for some very few. If that's the barometer you want to use, then fair enough and at least you're consistent. Otherwise no, Persona is not niche anymore. It's on the low end of the mid tier. But it's not niche.

@goldenelementxl: Sorry, I never saw your last paragraph. As for getting into P5 if you didn't like P4/G... well, it would depend on why you didn't like P4. Was it the dungeons? If so, then chances are high you will like P5. Was it the turn based battles or the daily life division? If so, then no, chances are that you're not going to enjoy this one either, to be fair.

Still a niche game. Even weird indie alt bands make huge hits once in a while. Its an exception not the norm.

Considering it has an install base of 60 million, any good PS4 game should be selling 1-2 million easily.

1.5 million means its not a flop. Not that its not niche.

I'm not hating on the game either, as I said after E3, I generally hate anime games and just the artstyle of the game had me interested in it when I saw it at E3. Its a cool looking game.

@aigis: probably 3-4. It's been a blast. Ghost Recon is back baby.

@charizard1605: Me calling the game "niche" and you calling it "on the lower end of the mid tier" doesn't seem like a big difference. I would argue the "bottom tier" is niche, so if something is "lower end of mid tier" or "higher end of bottom tier," we are kinda splitting hairs.

The definition of niche is, "small, specialized section of the population." I would call a game with a 1% attach rate belonging to a small, specialized section of the PS3 and PS4 population. I bring up Splatoon because the Wii U itself was a niche console. It's worldwide attach rate is horrendous. And Splatoon was exclusive to that console. More people in Japan bought Splatoon in 2016 than bought Persona 5. Splatoon came out in 2015. I know I keep repeating that, but that fact is alarming to me and I feel it proves my point.

We have different opinions of what niche is. That's fine. And me saying Persona 5 is niche isn't a knock on the game. There are plenty of niche titles that I would pick over the AAA blockbusters released every year.

The game is still available on WiiU isn't it?

@goldenelementxl: Can't wait to see how Japan receives Splatoon 2, should be fun to watch.

As I mentioned below:

Well deserved, very glad it's doing so well. Congrats to Atlus for making an awesome game. I'm really surprised GTAV still sells like crazy (bought it at launch didn't get into this driving-criminal life sim :D) and Horizon is out of the top 10. Brits have bad taste apparently. :)

Ahh didn't see that. And I agree if there were more Switches, heck even more WiiU's, Zelda would own the charts.

Awesome to hear! Persona is great!

@charizard1605 I haven't played it yet. Want to do P3 first. Was wondering, though, how does P5 stack up in your opinion? Do you think it's better than P4G?

@reduc_ab_: So far (I'm 60 hours in) Persona 5 is better in every way except for the soundtrack

I keep seeing niche being thrown around. Who cares if a game is niche, as long as it's good.

It's awesome! Hope you get to play it some time soon :)

@charizard1605: I will be playing it. It will be my first Persona game.