Persona 5: The Phantom Xwas always going to be a divisive one. It takes the best parts of thePersonaseries, specificallyPersona 5, and adds a bunch of gacha and pay-to-play mechanics. It’s a fully-fledged Persona RPG, and a compelling follow-up to Persona 5, complete with life-sim elements, fierce Persona battles, and trips to Mementos, but the free-to-play monetization could have put long-time fans off.
That doesn’t seem to be the case, though, at least initially, as Persona 5: The Phantom X has already beaten Persona 5: Royal’s peak Steam concurrent player count.
Persona 5: The Phantom X Is Already Flying On Steam
According toSteamDB, on its launch, Persona 5: The Phantom X reached a peak of 41,622 players— a solid showing. By comparison,Persona 5 Royalmanaged 35.474 players at its peak, giving The Phantom X around a 15 percent increase over its predecessor.
There are more than a few things to take into consideration here, however. The Persona brand has exploded in popularity, arguably as a result of Persona 5 Royal andits stellar reviews, so that game’s peak was never going to be huge.
Persona 5: The Phantom X is also a free-to-play game, meaning there is no monetary outlay for players to dip their toes in and see if they can work around its monetization.
Finally, Persona 5 Royal launched first onPlayStation 4, where a large portion of players would have played the game, then simultaneously onNintendo Switch,PlayStation 5,Steam,Xbox One, andXbox Series X/S18 months later. This would have fragmented the audience, unlike The Phantom X, which only launched on Steam and mobile devices.
The bigger test for the Phantom X will be to see if it can surpassPersona 3 Reload’sconcurrent player count on Steam. That peaked at 45,002 at launch, holding the record for any game in the series. It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that the game surpassesMetaphor: ReFantazio’speak, which currently stands at 85,961.
The game does have a long way to go in terms of reviews, compared to other Persona games, sitting at a “Mostly Positive” 72 percent.
In our Persona 5: The Phantom Xreview in progress, we said, “As far as mobile games go, the monetization doesn’t seem too forced in that you could play and happily hit pause to wait for things to replenish before progressing further and never spend a penny. Whether I stick with it because the narrative and gameplay steal my attention (and my heart), or whether I bounce off because I get too frustrated by monetization roadblocks remains to be seen, though.”
While its long-term legs remain to be seen, Persona 5: The Phantom X’s day one player count is a testament to how powerful the Persona IP has become over the last few years. Let’s just see how many stick around, given its brazen monetization.
