Sony's latest State of Play stream was stacked, with one of the standouts proving Rise of the Ronin, a new action-RPG from Team Ninja. It's not just fans that are hopeful over the upcoming game, though, as Koei Tecmo is equally optimistic over the game being a big part of its future.
As shared on Twitter (opens in new tab) by Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki, Koei Tecmo – of which Team Ninja is a division of – hopes Rise of the Ronin will sell 5 million copies "as one of the important strategic pillars of the company's mid-term growth strategy."
To provide a sense of scale, Nioh 2 surpassed 2.5 million sales earlier this year around two years after release, at which point Team Ninja confirmed (opens in new tab) that Nioh had cleared 5 million in time for its fifth anniversary.
Some of those hopes may lay in how long the action-RPG has been in the works. Team Ninja director Fumihiko Yasuda reveals in a Sony blog (opens in new tab) that work on Rise of the Ronin initially kicked off seven years ago, with Sony offering support throughout the years. "The development has progressed slowly and freely, much like the spirit of a Ronin," Yasuda says.
If you’ve been out of the loop, Rise of the Ronin is a combat-focused, open-world action-RPG that takes place in Japan as the Edo Period draws to a close. You’ve got oppressive rulers and deadly diseases while "western influence permeates as the civil war continues to rage between the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Anti-Shogunate factions." Against this backdrop, you take up the role of a ronin bound to no master and free to make their own choices.
That’s not all we saw during the State of Play stream, though. God of War Ragnarok got a new trailer and a swanky controller reveal to boot.
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