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.