Koei Tecmo founder: If I wasn’t the boss I’d have been fired over Nioh’s 13-year development

The founder and CEO of Koei Tecmo says he’s mainly responsible for the lengthy development of Nioh.

The Team Ninja game was initially announced in 2004 under the working title Oni, but wasn’t actually released until early 2017.

During this time, the game went through a handful of very different iterations, from a traditional RPG developed by Koei to an action RPG developed by Omega Force, to a full Ninja Gaiden-style action game developed by Team Ninja.

In an interview with Denfaminicogamer, Yoichi Erikawa explains that he was the main reason the game was scrapped so many times, and that if he’d been anyone else he would have lost his job.

Describing Nioh as “a game I pursued self-indulgently” (as translated by Automaton), Erikawa recalled: “Development took 12 years. If it were someone working under me doing this, they would have been fired.”

“Even so,” he explained, “after remaking it three times, we put out a good game. Nioh was created when Koei and Tecmo merged, and it combined the strengths of both companies into something entertaining. As you know, Koei’s forte was historical games, while Tecmo excelled at action games.”

Erikawa said that he continues to do the final check on Koei Tecmo games before they’re released, and if he doesn’t find “a new form of entertainment value” he asks for it to be remade.

As of October 2022, the Nioh franchise – Nioh, Nioh 2 and the 2021 remaster of the first game – had exceeded 7 million units worldwide, according to Koei Tecmo. Specific sales figures for each game in the series, as well as the remaster of the first game, aren’t available.