Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida has called NieR: Automata the “game that changed everything”, as it was responsible for reviving the Japanese games industry on its release.
Speaking to Japanese outlet AV Watch (via Automaton), Yoshida discussed how during the PS3 era, sales of Japanese games had declined and increasingly studios there were chasing “overseas tastes”.
That changed with NieR: Automata in 2017, released for the PS4. “I think Yoko Taro created it without paying any mind at all to making it sell overseas, but it was a tremendous success,” said Yoshida.
The game proved Japanese studios could find success by creating Japanese-style games. “With NieR, everyone realised this,” said Yoshida. “That it wasn’t just something they could do, but something they had to do.”
As such, Japanese studios strove to “create based on their own culture and what they knew”, realising this was the appeal of their work overseas.
“I think that the Japanese game industry revived after NieR, so much so that you could talk about pre-NieR and post-NieR eras. Simply put, I think that was the title that made everyone want to pursue Japanese-style games,” said Yoshida.
NieR creator Yoko Taro himself responded on social media, thanking Yoshida for the praise but crediting producer Yosuke Saito, who “ordered” him to make a game “that targets the Japanese market, without worrying about overseas reviews”.
“Or, to put it more precisely,” said Taro, “I remember being told something like ‘Yoko, you can’t make games for overseas, so (at least) try to make it for Japan’.”
なんか飛んできたので。オートマタを評価していただいているのは光栄ですが、「海外評価を気にせず日本向けに作れ」と命令したのは齊藤Ｐです。
もうちょっと正確に言うなら「ヨコオさんは海外向けにゲーム作るのは無理だから（せめて）日本向けに頑張ってくれ」的なことを言われたような記憶。 https://t.co/kOr2BwjFSs
— yokotaro (@yokotaro) March 29, 2025
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Saito then replied: “What I said at the time went more like this: Since we’re Japanese people, there’s no need for us to go out of our way to cater to people overseas. Surely, we’ll be able to attract at least a million players among all the people out there who genuinely want to play a Japanese game made by a Japanese person (the one and only Yoko Taro).”