Something that happens quite a bit in video games is one franchise starting its life, becoming famous, and a new franchise spins out of it and tries to get its own fame. But, of course, whether that works depends on the games themselves and the quality attached to each title. The Mario franchise is an excellent example of this. The famed plumber’s titles started as just a platformer, but then he and others became kart racers, mini-game battlers, sports legends, and so on. But today, we’re talking about the Shin Megami Tensei series and the games it spawned after a few years in the Persona titles.
Many people forget that these two are connected despite similar gameplay loops. SMT was born back in 1992, and Persona had its first game four years later. Fast forward to now, and the two have had great success in their own unique ways, especially regarding sales. A new sales report measured how well the franchises were doing in terms of overall sales. Not only in terms of video game sales but slot machines, toys, and other affiliated media. The results showed that Shin Megami Tensei sold over 19 million units, and Persona sold over 15.5 million units.
Those are both impressive numbers, and both of them have benefitted from recent history. If you recall, Shin Megami Tensei had a major release last year around this time with their highly-anticipated fifth main entry. It came out for Nintendo Switch and did well. As for its spinoff franchise, it had its fifth primary entry years ago in Persona 5 and sold millions of units. Then it got an upgraded form, which went multiplatform this year and is doing well so far.
What’s interesting to note is that the spinoff franchise is very close to the original series in terms of numbers. But, said spinoff series is arguably more popular than the games it was born from. Its fifth entry alone was a landmark title that made more people interested in the franchise than ever. Plus, next January, we’ll get multiplatform releases for past games in the Persona franchise. If those do well, that’ll close the gap between the two even further.
Then, if a sixth main entry is announced, the anticipation for that will lead to significant sales overall so long as the game has the right quality.
So what does this all show and prove? Simply put, all it takes is one big swing to change things. Persona 5 by Atlus did everything it could to stand out, and people took notice, and now they want more of this series. That’s not to say Shin Megami Tensei can’t do the same thing, but it’ll need to be big to take back its crown.
Source: SEGA Sammy
