Yoko Taro Says His Projects Keep Getting Axed: “Better to Release Nothing Than Something Off”

Yoko Taro, the director behind the cult-hit Nier series, says he hasn’t been sitting idle; he’s been working behind the scenes. Still, for all the time spent, every project he’s touched recently has been canceled before making it to your screen.

He opened up about this recent string of dead ends during an on-stage chat with Hideki Kamiya at G-CON 2025 in South Korea. Fans expecting updates on a new Nier or another wild Yoko project came away with something else: honesty about the creative process, the pressure of expectations, and what it means when only the best work matters.

“I Was Working, But You Didn’t See Anything”: Canceled Games and Creative Standards

It’s easy to think Yoko Taro has taken a break since Nier: Automata shook up the industry. He addressed this head-on, saying, “People often say things like, ‘why don’t you make a sequel to NieR?’ or ‘Yoko isn’t doing any work,’ but lately there have been many projects that ended up being stopped partway through.”

Those canceled projects weren’t pipe dreams, either, Taro confirmed he’d been hard at work. “So I was working, but they just didn’t make it out into the world. Since I’ve been paid for it, it’s no personal problem for me, but because nothing has been released as output, it looks like I haven’t been working.”

Rather than dodge or apologize for that record, Taro stood by the idea that not releasing a flawed game is a victory. “I don’t have any negative feelings about it, because I think it’s better not to release something at all than to put out something odd or not quite right.”

No Quick Nier Sequel; And a Chilling Warning About AI’s Future Role

Yoko Taro’s candor wasn’t limited to past cancellations. Fans hoping for a quick return to the Nier universe might want to lower their hopes. Back in 2023 at the same event, Taro and series producer Yosuka Saito revealed they were developing a project together; separate from Nier itself. There were plans to talk more about it in 2024, plans that never materialized. Whether this was just another of the axed projects remains unclear.

Saito reportedly told fans during that earlier event that as long as Yoko Taro is around, the Nier series will endure. There are “circumstances,” though, that are keeping a new game from moving forward. What those roadblocks are, neither Taro nor Saito have spelled out.

Even as his own projects stall, Taro’s keeping an eye fixed on the industry’s future. Earlier this year, he warned that within fifty years, AI could make game developers obsolete. “Game creators may be treated like bards,” he mused, possibly performed-for but irrelevant in a world shaped by algorithms. In short, don’t take the director’s silence as a lack of ideas or effort; in his world, if it isn’t good enough, you’ll never see it. And maybe that’s the point.