It’s been a while since Yoko Taro has made a game, hasn’t it? That last public (key word here) thing he worked on was a mobile game about how Sega controls pretty much everything called 404 Game Re:set in 2023 (it shut down in 2024). Before that was a trio of Voice of Cards games in 2021/22, and before that the Nier Replicant not-quite-a-remake and also now defunct mobile game Nier Reincarnation. In terms of the big thing that everyone wants, a non-gacha Nier game, things have been very quiet, but that can be said of Taro’s work as a whole. Apparently, though, that’s not for lack of trying.
The developer recently made an appearance at Korean video game convention G-CON 2025, where alongside Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya he spoke of his approach to game design (via 4Gamer, translations by Automaton). On the topic of this idea that he’s not working right now, Taro had this to say: “I often get told stuff like ‘Why aren’t you making a new sequel to NieR’ or ‘Yoko Taro isn’t doing anything,’ but that’s because recently, a lot of projects I was involved in got discontinued midway through development.” Ah. That’s a tad awkward, and upsettingly common.
“I’ve actually been working on some stuff, it’s just that it never ended up seeing the light of day,” Taro continued. “I got paid for it, so I personally have no issues with that, but people seem to think that I haven’t been doing anything just because none of the work I’ve done is being released.”
I would like to be very clear here that I have no idea what Taro may have been working on, and what the status of a hypothetical Nier game might currently be. But, if you’re the kind of person that likes to have a moan at game devs on Vitter, maybe cut Taro some slack. And maybe do that for literally everyone, actually.
