Several reports are saying that the much awaited "Persona 5" would likely come out in Japan and in the US before the year ends, according to Gamespresso. The news outlet recalled that Atlus "repeatedly" hinted about this before.
Note that Movie Pilot earlier speculated that the game might not come out this year in the West. "The Japanese game industry often releases their titles much later in the year for Western audiences. For example, Persona 4 actually arrived in the West almost 5 months after its release date in Japan. We see this happen time and time again," to quote the Movie Pilot report. The news outlet also speculated that Atlus might finally announce the official release date of the game at E3 Conference next month.
Last month, we reported that the new game would likely arrive in the last quarter of this year, citing the Sega Sammy's latest financial report. The financial report revealed that four games would be released for the first and second quarter of the 2016 fiscal year (between April and September 2015) -- "Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai Deluxe" (scheduled for May 28); "Stella Glow" (scheduled for June 4); "Alien Isolation" (scheduled for June 11); and "Persona 4: Dancing All Night" (scheduled for June 25).
Persona Central said this information clearly hints that the company could likely release the new game during the third quarter of the financial year 2016, which means that it would be available October to December 2015.
Katsura Hashino is credited as the "Persona 5" game director. Character design is by Shigenori Soejima. Game music is composed by Shoji Meguro.
According to the Hashino's statement, "Persona 5" would be focused on high school students. Kotaku in its earlier report identified some of the game's characters such as "Protagonist," "Ryuji Sakamoto," "Morgana," and "Ann Takamaki." The school's name on the other hand is "Shujin Gakuen High School." Here are some parts of his statement in its English version (via Siliconera):
"For this game, we're going with a challenge that fuses together a juvenile school setting that is as large as life, together with a picaresque romance. In the previous game, we wrote a story that involved having a justice group chase down a bad guy that could easily be feared by just about anyone.
"This time, it's about a group of high school students that are being "chased" by unexpected occurrences due to the justice they believe in. We're writing [the story] to convey a thrilling everyday life in the shoes of these characters, that are as large as life, in this juvenile school setting.