Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida has said the Nier Automata played a role in breathing new life into the Japanese games industry. 

Speaking to AV Watch – as translated by Genki – the former studios chief said that the game helped that market realise that local studios realised that their titles could in fact be popular outside of Japan. Yoshida argues that Japanese games developers went through a phase of wanting to chase trends that were proving popular from companies from other regions. 

Nier Automata launched in 2017 and went on to sell nine million copies to date. 

"I think [the game's director] Yoko Taro made it without thinking about whether or not it would sell overseas," Yoshida said. 

"From there it became clear that Japanese creators were making 'Japanese things' and those things were selling overseas. Everyone realized that with Nier.

"It wasn't just a matter of saying 'It's okay to do it like that', but "we have to do it like that'. So the direction of Japanese creators became 'let's stop imitating overseas countries anymore', 'if we create things with our own culture and that we understand, they will understand it overseas'.

"I think the Japanese game industry was revived after Nier so much so that I would say it was before Nier and after Nier."