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 am eagerly awaiting this game. It's good to see Atlus cares for its fans, and chose to ship the game with the art book.  

I love those obscure japanese RPGs. I have played a Shin Megami Tensei game recently and loved it. I read it is not even the best game of the series. I am looking forward to play these games.

i love them too. it's really sad they're not as popular as final fantasy, since they're so much better.

I do love me some Digital Devil Saga, although I hate belly aches. Also, they are fantastically hard RPG's sometimes, which is good! I own Nocturne, yet somehow havn't played it. Wouldn't shock me if I randomly picked this game up though.

nocturne is way harder than DDS.

Well better late and fixed than early and missing something. Also, I do want that art book so I'll gladly wait. According to one of EGM's reviewers: 'if you are a PS2 owning RPG fan then this is the game of the year on that console'.

it sure is. i hate how its being overlooked by mediore games on the next-gen consoles

It's been delayed further to August 14:

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/25/persona-3-delayed-until-aug-14/