Atlus’ Persona franchise is one of the most popular in the history of JRPGs, but its Steam player count numbers have been blown away by the recently-released Digimon Story: Time Stranger. Digimon Story: Time Stranger launched last week to mostly positive reviews and has proven to be a big hit for the franchise. In fact, it’s quickly becoming one of the most popular Digimon video games ever made.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger is a turn-based RPG where players collect, train, and evolve their own team of Digimon. It features a time-bending narrative, plenty of references to the classic anime series, and a lot of content for franchise fans to sink their teeth into. The game has proven to be a big hit perhaps even beyond what many anticipated, becoming one of the most popular JRPGs in the history of Steam.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger Player Count Compared to Persona 5
As pointed out by GamesRadar, Digimon Story: Time Stranger‘s player count numbers on Steam have even trounced some of the genre’s heaviest hitters, like Persona and Final Fantasy. Digimon Story: Time Stranger‘s peak concurrent player count on Steam is 84,458 at the time of this writing. For comparison, Persona 5 Royal‘s peak concurrent player count on Steam was just 35,298. According to GamesRadar, the only two JRPGs that have been bigger on Steam are Metaphor: ReFantazio with its 85,961 concurrent players and Granblue Fantasy: Relink with its 114,054 concurrent players.
Clearly, Digimon Story: Time Stranger is popular, and its success will hopefully mean more Digimon games with even bigger budgets are released in the future. However, there is one major caveat to consider. Persona 5 didn’t come to Steam until six years after it was first released on PS3 and PS4. It’s safe to say that the majority of Persona fans had likely already played the game on one of those platforms, which could explain why its Steam concurrent player count is low compared to Digimon Story: Time Stranger, but why Time Stranger‘s player count is lower than fellow Atlus RPG Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Whenever Persona 6 finally releases to the masses, if it’s available on Steam day-and-date as other platforms, chances are it will beat Digimon Story: Time Stranger, but that remains to be seen. Word of mouth for Digimon Story: Time Stranger has proven to be quite strong, and it seems like the game is getting the attention of longtime franchise fans and newcomers alike. One has to wonder how it’s performing on consoles, but hopefully more concrete sales information becomes available sooner rather than later.