Don’t expect the Nioh games to be released on Xbox

It looks like Team Ninja’s Nioh games won’t be heading to Xbox anytime soon.

Both Nioh games were originally released on PS4 and PC, but never on Microsoft’s console.

Speaking to VGC, Nioh director Fumihiko Yasuda downplayed any possibility of the game coming to Xbox.

“There’s nothing really to note about that,” he said. “Currently, there’s not really too much of a possibility of having Nioh on Xbox platforms, but we do hope Xbox fans enjoy Wo Long and look forward to that game coming out. That’s probably all we can say on that at the moment.”

That’s not to say that Team Ninja isn’t impressed with Xbox or its Game Pass offering.

Its next game, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, will release across PlayStation, PC and Xbox, arriving on Game Pass on day one.

Yasuda hopes that Game Pass will boost the game’s online multiplayer.

“We’re very happy that so many players are going to have the chance to try out a Team Ninja title potentially for the first time with Wo Long. But just because it’s on Game Pass, we haven’t gone and changed ‘XYZ’… That’s not really something that we’ve done on the dev team side,” Yasuda said.

“But what we do think is a really big positive for having the game on Game Pass is that with so many new players trying it out, that will help the online community grow potentially, and then there’ll be a lot more players for people to play with online or play together in the multiplayer aspects of the game. So we’re really hoping that that’ll keep the community in a really good spot, and thriving.”

Yasuda is also positive about the success of Xbox in Team Ninja’s home market of Japan.

“We do feel there’s a bigger presence for the Xbox platform in Japan: we’re definitely seeing that here. We think that Game Pass is helping a lot more people get acquainted with the Xbox platform – a lot more people are coming in and playing games and being part of that,” said Yasuda.

“However, from our perspective, just from a numbers standpoint, Japan seems to be pretty dominated by Nintendo consoles and the Switch. But yeah, we definitely are feeling in Japan that Xbox is definitely trying to take a bigger foothold with the current platform.”

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty will release next year. Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa defended Team Ninja’s decision to stick with one difficulty, but with multiple ways players can tackle the challenge.