Summary
- Ex-PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says Nier: Automata “revived” the Japanese games industry due to the impact it had.
- Yoshida believes that its success in the West helped Japanese creators realize that they didn’t have to cater to Western tastes in their games for them to sell well.
- He thinks the impact was so huge that the Japanese gaming industry can be split into “before Nier and after Nier” with how huge the perspective shift was.
Nier: Automata’s impact on the gaming landscape is a little understated sometimes. It’s had more of a sway on game development than some entire series, and has arguably turned Nier into a massive franchise for Square Enix by itself. Its main character, 2B, is a gaming icon, propping up Square Enix’s merch sales by herself, and she’s been in more crossovers than you can count on both hands.
There is one person that fully understands the impact that Nier: Automata has had over the years, and that’s former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida. In fact, Yoshida believes that Nier: Automata was so impactful that it actually changed the entire landscape of the Japanese gaming industry, going so far as to claim that the game actually “revived” it.
Nier Automata “Revived” Japan’s Gaming Industry, Says Shuhei Yoshida
Speaking with Japanese outlet AV Watch (translated by GamesRadar), Yoshida claims that Nier: Automata actually convinced a lot of Japanese developers to stop catering to Western tastes, as Yoko Taro made it without thinking of a particular audience:
“I think Yoko Taro made it without thinking about whether or not it would sell overseas,” said Yoshida. “From there it became clear that Japanese creators were making ‘Japanese things’ and those things were selling overseas. Everyone realized that with Nier.”
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Yoshida even thinks that the impact on the Japanese gaming industry was so massive that the timeline can now be divided into “before Nier and after Nier”, really driving home just how much he thinks the perspective of Japanese developers changed because of its release. You have to be a damn good game to have that kind of impact.
Despite that supposed impact, we haven’t had another mainline console Nier game since, which is surprising given how popular the series has become. Yoko Taro and series producer Yosuke Saito have been teasing the potential of a new game announcement at some point this year, but they’re being cheekily vague about the details. We have a livestream celebrating the anniversay of the series next month, so fingers crossed we hear something there.
- Released
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March 7, 2017
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence