Few Japanese developers are as acclaimed as Atlus, the development studio and publisher behind the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games. Atlus has been on a bit of a hot streak, releasing Persona 5 Strikers earlier this year and Shin Megami Tensei 5 back in November. While that's already a decent helping of video games, it appears Atlus has one more trick up its sleeve for 2022.
As translated by Gematsu, Famitsu recently released its annual end-of-the-year developer interviews, which just so happen to include a quote from Atlus' Shinjirou Takada. In the quote, Takada stated that he chose "Challenge" as his keyword for 2022 "in hopes to release a title to the world that will become a pillar for Atlus." Takada went on to say that Atlus is hard at work developing a new game and that he hopes fans will look forward to it.
While the quote doesn't say much about the project itself, "pillar" is a crucial word here. It's not often that developers throw the term around without any weight behind it, so it seems safe to assume that Atlus is working on something special. Of course, that begs the question of what, exactly, Atlus has in the cards, as the possibilities are pretty much endless. There are some likely candidates, however.
The most obvious answer is Persona 6, which Atlus has already more or less confirmed when it stated that it would have to make another entry to exceed Persona 5. The original Persona 5 launched in 2016, which would leave a 6-year gap between the two projects – a healthy timeline for a sequel. Persona 6 also fits the bill as being a "pillar" game, as the franchise is well-regarded and tends to make an impact when new entries release.
The devil's advocate argument is that Persona 5 Strikers just released this year, and while it wasn't a mainline entry, it may still cause some franchise fatigue. Plus, Persona 5 Royal launched in 2019, which may also be a distraction from a longer Persona 6 development time. After all, Persona 4 and Persona 5 had an 8-year gap between their base versions, so 6 years might not be enough to get Persona 6 out the door.
It's also possible that by "pillar" Atlus means an entirely new IP, which could be propped up besides both Persona and SMT. If that is the case, fans will have something entirely new to be excited about. For now, though, all fans can do is wait patiently for more information.
Source: Famitsu (via Gematsu)