During that whole downtime period I managed to miss this bit of information from AnimeNewsI.

It turns out that Kotobukiya, probably best known for their one-coin figurine series, is making a 1/7 scale (clocking in her at about 210 mm high, or about 8.25 inches), pre-painted PVC figurine of Aigis. She is posable at the neck, arms and wrists, unlike many higher-end PVC figurines. Of special note is that images show her with both her normal and gun hands, implying that these can be interchanged as you please.

Kotobukiya plans to sell her for ¥6,090 in August, 2007. This equals out to about $51 USD. An image is included below, but you can see the rest on our Persona 3 merchandise page or by visiting the original source above.

Japanese sales numbers for the past week are in (from NeoGAF) and Persona 3: Fes has debuted at number three with 90,369 units sold. The charts don’t seem to differentiate between the deluxe (Persona 3 and Fes together) and basic (just the Fes expansion), but it seems to be a pretty fair debut.

Coming in first and second were Super Paper Mario for the Wii and Fate/Stay Night for the PS2, respectively.

A news post on RPGFan confirmed today that the US release of Persona 3 will not include the Fes expansion disc. Just released in Japan, Fes includes a new chapter to the story and other additions. There was some hope that Fes might be included despite how close in proximity the Japanese release is to the the US release of the main game, but those hopes seem to have been dashed.

We’ll let you know if anything else develops. Until Atlus says otherwise, there is always some hope that Fes might pop up eventually.

Famitsu’s 2006 Awards were recently announced and as such are making the rounds on English websites. As a slight surprise, Atlus’s Persona 3 won the “RPG Award”. Of course, in a way it kind of feels like a third place nod considering Final Fantasy XII and Pokemon: Diamond/Pearl wound up with the grand prize.

Here’s the overall rundown, thanks to QJ.

• Rookie Award - Blue Dragon
• Best Hit Award - Pokemon Diamond and Pearl
• Innovation Award - Wii Sports
• Rearrange Award - New Super Mario Brothers
• High Performance Award - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• Dramatic Award - Ryu Ga Gotoku 2 (Yakuza 2)
• Game Design Award - Okami
• Multiplayer Action Award - Monster Hunter Portable 2
• Impact Award - Dead Rising
• Portable Award - Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
• RPG Award - Persona 3
• Most Valuable Person - Hironobu Sakaguchi
• Game character of the Year - Mario
• Game company of the year - Nintendo
• Grand Prize: Game of the Year Award - Final Fantasy XII, Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl

Not a major announcement usually, but given the proposed changes to E3 for 2007 (including significant downsizing), it’s still good to read. Atlus is signed up with dozens of other major publishers to have some sort of presence at E3. The point of the downsizing (and other changes) was seemingly to pull some of the spotlight off of the biggest players and to prevent it from continuing to be such a circus… we’ll see how well this works out for smaller companies such as Atlus.

Turns out that the information from EBGames that we reported on in March was correct. Persona 3 will be available in a collector’s edition package. Atlus confirmed this on their website earlier today with a PDF press release. This so-called “deluxe edition” seems to be the only option available.

Aside from the expected PR lingo, the PDF explains that the game will contain the following items:

1. A full-color, 52-page art book packed with character art, concept sketches, and more!
2. Soundtrack CD featuring the hip urban-techno music of Shoji Meguro, composer of the haunting and unforgettable scores for Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga!
3. A striking collector’s box to store your game and all the extra goodies!

Exclamation points are Atlus’s emphasis, obviously. Unfortunately, the press release doesn’t give any more concrete information as to the release date. We’re still stuck with “Summer 2007″, although EBGames is claiming July. It’s obviously been right so far.

Note: This is a sticky post and will remain at the top for a short period of time. Newer posts will display below this one.

So, that redesign took a lot longer than planned. The sad thing is that it is not finished yet. There’s still content to move (particularly in some of the lesser visited Games sections) and new sections to fill in (Downloads?). Most of the old posts are still not moved over and categories on the side are claiming they have entries they do not. This will be fixed over the next few days. Beyond that, I’ve taken the quick route with some of the banners. In the near future, expect there to be artwork changes as well as textual changes.

On the plus side, every thing else has gone according to plan. The site now runs on WordPress instead of Movable Type. The main reason for this is for vB integration. You’ll notice that every entry now has a “comments” link at the end of it. Instead of having a separate comment form specific to WordPress, however, the site is set up so that you may comment with your forum account. Any post made on the front page that is deemed worth having comments for will show up in the new “News Posts” section of the forum instantly. Clicking the link on the main site to comment will bring you to a new reply window in the forums.

Obviously you will need a forum account to use this, but it’s quick to sign up for and saves you the trouble of remembering yet another set of account information.

This is probably the biggest change, but a lot of other smaller things have happened that are of benefit. The site is now easier to update and easier to expand. I don’t foresee myself running into quite as many walls as I did with the last version. I’m sure there will always be people who preferred how it looked, but you’ll get used to it. Personally, I think the place needed some color. It’s only going to get more colorful from here as I finish up the remaining imagery.

In any case, sorry for the delay. It’s time to get back on track!