Square Explains why NieR: Automata Won't Be Coming to Xbox One

NieR: Automata first caught the eye of gamers when it released a demo: unusual enough in this day of age, but the quality of the demo combined with tight gameplay and a teasing return to an often overlooked and undervalued PlayStation 3 gem. And the other day, a new trailer for the game was released to the world, showing off the arsenal of weapons available for you as you cleave through armies of kind of adorable enemies.

Humanity has been driven from the Earth by mechanical beings from another world. In a final effort to take back the planet, the human resistance sends a force of android soldiers to destroy the invaders. Now, a war between machines and androids rages on... A war that could soon unveil a long-forgotten truth of the world.

So, one thing you might be noticing is that this so happens to be a Playstation 4 exclusive game (well, if you don't count the PC release, which is scheduled for March 10). And between Nioh, Horizon: Zero Down, and now NieR: Automata, Sony’s console has been enjoying a lot of high-quality exclusives as of late. It’s enough to get Xbox One fans wondering why it is they’re being kept out of the loop. Well, I can’t speak for Horizon or Nioh, but as far as NieR is concerned, Producer Yosuke Saito recently told Express UK that you can blame the Xbox One’s poor performance in Japan for the omission.

"The main reason for this is that the Japanese market for Xbox One is not strong, so the decision was made to focus on PlayStation 4 rather than to split our efforts across two platforms. The biggest benefit to developing on one platform is that we did not have to split our time, allowing us to focus more on the quality. It is not about whether one platform is better than the other, it's that from a development point of view were can devote more time to one platform."

Ah, the free market. The bane of Xbox One players since time immortal. But for PlayStation 4 players, NieR will launch on March 7th, 2017.