Hey, I finally started playing Persona 4 and looking at the development timeline of, what's now, the P-Studio since the release of Persona 3. What's noticeable right off the bat is the period between P3 and P4 and the period between P4 and P5. The success of P3 and P4 allowed them to take advantage of the brand and many spin-offs and multimedia products followed. They also developed a new engine and Catherine with it in that time. All of it seems to have contributed to the super long wait of P5.

Now that Persona 5 is out across all major territories, how long do you expect the wait will be for another mainline Persona? With couple dancing games down the pike and the director, Katsura Hashino, stepping down, it seems very much in the air. My guess is that it won't take as long but still a decent wait of 5 years from now, around 2023. New leads must have a lot of their own ideas and probably eager to prove themselves. If they stick with an updated version of the current engine, the process could be expedited.

Please no spoilers, I've only played P3 and very early in P4.

Depends on whether they're willing to reuse assets and the engine from P5, like P4 did from P3, or they're going to start fresh again.

If I had to guess, it will definitely be longer than P3 to P4, but probably a lot shorter than P4 to P5. 5 years sounds about right. I'm sure we'll see plenty of spin-offs and side projects in the meantime. (P5 Arena please.)

^this

Alright, let's get into some real thought on this, I suppose. Hope I won't ramble to much.

I don't think so. With Hashino and the crew doing Re:Fantasy as Studio Zero, I expect P-team to already be in some sort of pre-production on P6. P5 did well, and put them in front of a much larger audience. I think, that this will give them the opportunity to give the games to a new group of people and put their stamp on it as Hashino and Co did with 3, 4 and 5.

Judging by that, there are 2 ways this can go: Either they reuse the engine and do something like they did with 3, 4 (and while I don't think it'll be a year and change apart - hell it already isn't) and we could easily see something out around 2019. If they do a deep dive, which seems like the more likely situation with a new team taking over, then I'd guess we'll probably be looking at around 2020. Give or take a year perhaps.

I think 2023 is really too far out and I'd like you to consider the following:

1. P5 had some hefty development hurdles. They parent company literally went down in flames and they were sold off to Sega, they had to change console generations mid-development completely new engine, etc. That and whatever the hell happened with the localisation.

2. Speaking of localisation, what many don't consider and you might not either is that P5 was actually released in September of 2016. It's troubled localisation just pushed it deep into 2017 for us.

3. Hashino and co might be out and doing their own thing, but that's also been official and announced since December of 2016. At which point they'd already been throwing out some sort of concept video for re:fantasy. P-Studio had new leads assigned to it at this point already and surely they must have been thinking on what to do next with Persona once they got the news. This leaves the entirety of 2017 to be some sort of early planning or even true pre-production for P6, which is what we'd expect them to be making next simply because P5 took off the way it did.

Even with a relatively long, 4 year dev-cycle, 2020 is in sight. At this point, I think a next-gen release is to be expected but unless something major occurs I don't think it should be much further beyond that. Also, despite the whole top crew kinda taking off, I still expect Soejima to do character design and Meguro to do the music since they seem to somehow be able to do everything at once and are also positioned in some meta-studio sphere.

That's my 2 cents, I guess. Hope I make some sort of sense - if any of what I've written is seems unclear please ask away, I probably should be up right now.

EDIT: Ah, also as a quick side-note. They did experiment with engines with Catherine for next-gen - but Catherine is not made in the same engine as Persona 5. While P5 has an in-house engine they developed specifically for it, Catherine uses GameBryo (yup, the same one Bethesda uses for their games). With the bugs Bethesda games are prone to, I like to imagine that they tried it for Catherine to experiment and just went "Nope, not doing that again." afterwards and built their own instead.

2054.

Hopefully less than 8-9 years this time. I hope you're all excited for years worth of spinoffs and a not insignificant chance of a P4 Golden-style re-release.

That's a tough one. First, I don't think they intended Persona 5 to take that long. (Anybody remember that first trailer that teased Winter 2013?) Since they are already on the PS4 and have the tech to support that style of game, I would hope whoever leads the next project says "Ok, let's just make another game. Let's not worry about creating entirely new tech or developing a game for the PlayStation 5." The gap between Persona 3 and 4 was really short, but graphically those games were incredibly similar and they reused assets.

They could go down the spin-off hole again, but they are already doing that with the Dancing games. And while Atlus sure did like those spin-offs, Persona 5 also made them so much money--like it outsold all of their other games within the first month--I can envision them wanting another hit, as opposed to making 4 spin-off games which frankly don't sell that well. Also, Persona 5 is so damn long they don't really need to make Persona 5: FES / Persona 5: Golden, unless they add a female protagonist. That also seems unlikely since they released an "Ultimate Edition" of P5 already. Unless they do something crazy like flat out remake P3 or P4 with the Persona 5 engine or port all of those games to PC, I can see them making another mainline entry relatively soon. (It will never happen, but I still have this image in my head where the next game they make is some crazy, left field crossover, where your party is a mix of characters for P3, P4, and P5)

So let's say 4 years; somewhere between 2021 and 2022.

Like 2022 maybe

2020

High school setting

Edit: I just went by the headline. If I had to guess, then we won’t hear about P6 till 2020.

Hopefully not before Hashino’s fantasy project. I expect Wada to direct the next main title, which means it’ll probably be on same level of quality as those watered down spin-offs.

2022

And maybe we'll get a P5 Diamond/Platinum/Etc before that

I stopped expecting that game when I was still a boy. So a long time ago really.

@clagnaught: Part of the delay for P5 was because they moved it from PS3 only to also being on the PS4.

As long as we get it after the release of Persona 5: Golden, then i'm a happy man.

I really liked Persona 5 but a lot of the game's contents felt like a filler.

I'd like to think sooner than the last one, but probably not until 2020 Japan/ 2021 everywhere else.

Only after we get multiple P5 spin off games, a P5 anime, and a P5: Golden edition.

An announcement by 2020 would be nice, but here's my secret wish for the next whatever: I want them to give P5 the P3P treatment aka a female protagonist with new romance and confidant options. It made P3 feel like a new game entirely playing between male and female, despite the main story beats remaining the same.

I'd say 6 or 7 years.

I know this say "when" but I'll derail and replay as "what" for a bit and say that I want harsher punishments for being a cheating scumbag in P6. I wanna see the girls, not only call you out and kick your ass, but even leave the party. And if you try to go for that harem bullshit, I want the game either give you a bad ending with little to no new game plus carryover, or lock you in a state where the final boss is virtually impossible to beat because you pissed off the key members.

Back on topic though, I dunno. 2021.

4 to 5 years would be a good guess for time. I sure hope they bring it back to its roots and plays like a modern Persona 2. I've really felt let down by the stories of 3, 4, and 5. I'm tired of the scooby doo gang style to parties, I want each of my party members to have an actually back story to compliment a full story arc in the game. Persona Q was a better Persona game imo than 3/4 were.

Project Re-Fantasy might come out in 3 years and then maybe the team will make another Persona after that which could take another 4-5 years. So maybe 2023 - 2025. Or Atlus has a B-Team working on a new Persona game right now and it will be out in 2019 or 2020. In the mean time there will be dozens of Persona clones released every year by various developers while people wait for the real deal, just like Persona 5.

that it will be out in 2025.

I kind of agree with this for different reasons. As much as I really like Persona 3-5 (and I do!), 5 made me realize that I'm kind of satisfied with the modern Persona formula at this point. I'd play another one, but I think I'd only be super hyped if it seemed like it was really shaking things up.