Former PlayStation boss says Nier Automata “revived” the Japanese games industry and convinced developers to stop chasing overseas trends

Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida has praised Nier: Automata, and said its impact is so large, you can see a clear difference in the games industry “before Nier and after Nier.”

Speaking to AV Watch, the ex-executive broke down his decades-long run at the publisher and dived into a time in the games industry where Japanese creators were chasing global trends to no avail. Yoshida explains that as blockbuster games abroad began to ape Hollywood and became more realistic – think of your GTAs, Gears of Wars, and The Last of Us’ from the PS3/360 era – some Japanese developers also started making games to appeal to “slightly foreign tastes.”