Update: Atlus has released an official response to today's events. They can confirm that there's nothing "dangerous" or "defective" within any edition of Persona 5 and that only a "tiny" amount of cancellations have been issued by Amazon. Any users who have experienced issues with Amazon regarding their Persona 5 pre-orders should contact customer support for more information. Exactly what the issue was at Amazon or why so many people in the community shared similar cancellation problems remains unclear.
The Persona 5 community is confused and angry after Amazon sent out cancellation orders en masse earlier today, with the JRPG just weeks away from launch. Pre-orderers of Persona 5's standard SteelBook edition, as well as the Take Your Heart Premium edition, each reportedly received cancellation notices. Though, at first the community believed all Persona 5 orders were affected, Amazon has since officially clarified the situation. Not all pre-orderers have been affected.
According to Amazon, only the SteelBook and Take Your Heart Editions of Persona 5 were cancelled, specifically because of a manufacturer-caused defect:
"The actual reason why the order was canceled is that the entire inventory Amazon had received from the manufacturer had a major defect that was detected by one of our valued customer like you're [sic] and then an investigation began to check if all the items have the same issue and we had to cancel mass orders and return the item back to the manufacturer."
The Persona 5 cancellations appear to be solely associated with Amazon pre-orders at this time, as customers of other online retail outlets have not reported similar cancellations (despite some initial rumors). Publisher Atlus has also confirmed this, recently tweeting that they are working with Amazon to figure out what the problem is in the hope of correcting it.
The official cancellation email, however, made the issue out to be much more significant than just a standard defect. According to one received email, Amazon cited "regulated materials classified as dangerous goods" as the purpose of the cancellation. They noted that these types of products have to be delivered in a certain way and that Amazon could not ultimately provide that. Obviously that sounds like much larger of an issue than a simple SteelBook defect.
A second take, however, is that this has all been a giant mistake on Amazon's part. Would a shipment of video games truly be cancelled over a risk of dangerous materials? Would no other retailer be issuing similar cancellations, despite offering the exact same products? This could all be one big accident on Amazon's part. In fact, one pre-orderer is claiming that Amazon has already told him it was a mistake and that they should re-order the game:
"Well, I got a response from Amazon. They said it was a mistake, and that I should reorder the item. They also said they would wave shipping costs. I don't know if this is a case by case situation, but if you had your order cancelled, contact Amazon and they might respond with the same information now."
For the sake of the Persona 5 fans who have been looking forward to their special editions, hopefully this has all just been one big misunderstanding. With any luck, everything gets solved soon before its release date.
Persona 5 launches on April 4 for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.
Source: NeoGAF