— Atlus U.S.A., Inc. (@AtlusUSA) November 21, 2019
And that's about it! Yep just like you'd expect, they're going to leave us hanging in the mean time. Their past tweet history has been hinting at something big being announced soon, but now we at least have a time frame. We've known for quite some time that Persona 5 Royal would in fact be coming to the west in 2020, but hopefully now we'll see an actual release date. As for what Persona 5 Royal is...
Persona 5: The Royal -
If you haven't been following the news, or if you don't know much about Persona 5 in general, then let me fill you in. Basically Persona 5 is a popular JRPG that came out a few years ago. Since it's release a lot of new fans have been brought to the series, and the main character Joker was even added to Super Smash Bros Ultimate. The game has done very well, to say the least, but Atlus decided that wasn't enough. Thus "The Royal" was born.
While the original game was "complete" at it's time of release, this new version of the game is an "enhanced" release with new features and additional story and characters. While explaining too much about what is new goes into spoiler territory, I can say that the game's in game calendar has been expanded, and multiple new features have been spread throughout the original parts of the story. Although it might seem strange to do this with a game that's still pretty new, the fact is this is not the first time Atlus has done this. Persona 3 received a "FES" version that improved the core gameplay, and added a second "mini sequel" on at the end. It then went on to also get a PSP release which added a female playable character, but removed the overworld exploration to make up for the PSP hardware. Persona 4 later on was upgraded to it's "Golden" version, but that was a Vita release and not on the PS2 like the original. This game however is the most similar to what Royal is, considering it too added extra months onto the game year, and gave us new characters and features to play with.
So with that being said, which version of the game should be played? Well (without saying much), the new version is for sure the "definitive" release. There's more content. However not everyone may agree with the changes made to the base game, so it's hard to say. When it comes down to it though, it really depends what you are looking for. The original is still a great game, but if you can hold out for Royal you might as well.
