Square Enix recently announced that they’re working on a new Nier project with Taro Yoko. In a Famitsu interview about the upcoming project, Yoko and project producer Yosuke Saito revealed that they once had plans for a Nier game on PlayStation Vita.
During the interview, Famitsu pointed out that it’s been five years since the release of Nier, and ask about how the process for the new Nier project started.
“We’ve always had the thought of ‘wanting to do something new’ with the Nier IP,” explains Saito. “At first, we talked about how there are still a lot of people who’ve yet to play Nier, so we thought about making making it for PlayStation Vita and adding some kind of [new] element.”
Yoko says, “I had a talk with ILCA president [Takuya] Iwasaki (who was a director at Cavia at the time of Nier’s development) about ‘how I’d like to keep working with Saito on Nier and stuff,’ and it was likewise for Iwasaki. Together with the company Orca, which he’s also the president of, we had a proposal for a PlayStation Vita version of Nier.”
“This was around March of 2011,” Yoko continues. “However, it was decided that Orca would handle work for Dragon Quest X, so we weren’t able to make Nier’s PlayStation Vita version come true.”
Saito then explains that they also felt like doing something together with PlatinumGames. Since it was already five years since they released Nier, they felt that it would be a nice occasion to make something new with a Platinum Games.
“After that, Saito-san asked ‘would you like to make a new Nier game on the new generation of consoles?’ and now I’m sitting here,” says Yoko.
“By the way, after releasing the first game, I went to assistant producer Yuki Yokoyama at the time and asked ‘umm, I’d like to make a sequel to Nier…,’ to which he replied with, ‘ahh, well it didn’t sell too much, so a sequel would be rtough.’ It made me give up [on a new Nier game] but looking back, it sure brings back memories.”
The new Nier game is in development for PlayStation 4.
