A new date has been given for Persona 3: August 14th. Here’s the news post from Atlus’s site:

The new scheduled ship date for Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 is August 14th, 2007.

This is the very soonest that manufacturing of the Persona 3 art book can be completed, and also takes into account the time required for assembly of the final package.

The manufacturing issue with the art book was brought to our attention mere days prior to the initial ship date, and was a scenario both unforeseen and beyond our control. Our disappointment and frustration is tempered by the knowledge that the final product will live up to our standard of quality and also the expectations of our fans.

While many are willing to sacrifice the art book in favor of the game alone, the package we have spent the last few months designing, one intended to honor the series and reward fans for an eight year wait, would be irreparably compromised if we were to revise or abandon the deluxe package. Without the art book, the outer box would lack the structural integrity to endure shipping; all extras would need to be discarded. Again, this deluxe set was created for the fans of Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, and we are determined to see the special release through to the end.

We apologize for the delay, and we ask for your understanding.

A little longer than I figured it’d be, but what’s another few weeks?

Persona 3 won’t be making it’s July 24th release date. It was revealed on the Atlus forums that the game will see a slight delay in shipment due to issue with the include art book. The full text of the post is below:

Due to a manufacturing error with regard to the Persona 3 Art Book, the title will regretfully narrowly miss its scheduled ship date of July 24th, 2007. This was an unforeseen scenario, and one regretfully out of our control.

Presented with the choice of compromising on the quality of the art book, or shipping the game without said extra, we decided to have the art book redone with a higher quality binding, which will cause a very short delay in the ship date of the title.

While all other materials and packaging related to the game are complete, we were unwilling to sacrifice the art book, and as such will expedite the manufacturing process to the best of our ability in order to release the title as soon as is possible.

We appreciate your understanding and will release a formal announcement when Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 ships.

I would imagine this won’t be very major. Perhaps we’ll hear something this week or early next. Big thanks to aerozero for the news.

Persona 3 officially releases tomorrow and as such the reviews are starting to pour in. Here are the ones you can check out so far.

RPGFan - Damian Thomas’s review and Ashton Liu’s review.

Gamernode - Brian Lindsey’s review.

GameAlmighty - Matt Butrovich’s review.

Game Informer - Metacritic states GI gave the game an 8.5.

Play - Himuro informs us that Play gave the game a 9.5.

RPGamer - Michael Beckett’s review.

I’ll add more as time goes on, but for the most part it’s safe to just watch Metacritic’s page on the game.

I’ve been holding on to these wallpapers for a while because I wasn’t sure if Atlus USA was planning on making them available. Now that it looks like that won’t be happening, I feel OK about sticking them up on the site. These were only available on the Japanese bonus disc that came with pre-ordering the game. They were kindly provided to me months ago by a member of NeoGAF, although unfortunately I’m not sure who it was any longer (feel free to let me know if you know).

Here’s a preview:

Anyway, you can check them out (along with the older selection) in our Persona 3 wallpapers section. They’re all available in 800×600, 1024×768 and 1280×1024.

By way of Play comes the news that, like Digital Devil Saga 2, Persona 3 will feature an inner cover. It remains to be seen for sure, but Play gives the impression that the image they have is for the actual DVD case cover while the one we’re all familiar with is for some sort of outer casing (perhaps a box to hold all of the extras?). We shall see. You can check that out alongside the the soundtrack CD art and the cover for the included art book (along with some sample pages) by visiting this page.

The first page of the article also informs us to watch out for a review that should appear on the day the game releases.

Thanks to ShinByakki for the heads up.

We recently posted about GameAlmighty’s Persona 3 preview and now they have the full review up. The game comes out next week, so expect a flood of these… although if you’re reading this, you’re probably picking it up anyway.

Thanks to Tatsuya for pointing this one out.