April 29 will be a sad day for the fans of the NieR franchise, which finds itself affected by Square Enix’s ongoing strategic pivot toward AAA games.
NieR Reincarnation is shutting down on April 29, Square Enix has announced. This sad day for fans of the franchise will arrive less than three years after NieR Reincarnation was released for Android and iOS devices.
Developed by Japanese studio Applibot, NieR Reincarnation marked the Drakengard spin-off series’ first foray into mobile gaming. A fairly low-cost project for Square Enix to finance, the game ended up launching while the company was enjoying record-high revenues inflated by the global pandemic. With Square Enix facing declining sales over the two years that followed, the gaming giant ended up reviewing its entire operation in an effort to cut down on its annual product output and focus on fewer titles with higher revenue potential, meaning predominantly AAA projects.
NieR Reincarnation Fans Will Have 1 Month To Play Its Final Chapter
That endeavor has already resulted in the company shutting down multiple mobile titles, with NieR Reincarnation being the latest to join that list. Square Enix has recently taken to social media to thank the fans for their support of the gacha game, stating that its servers will shut down on April 29, at 10pm PT. Before that happens, Applibot will deliver one more story chapter, The People and the World Act 3: Transmigration, which is scheduled to release on March 28, at 6pm PT. Players will hence have just over a month’s worth of time to experience the conclusion of NieR Reincarnation‘s story.
Important Announcement 2/2
— NieR Re［in］carnation EN (@NieRReinEN) January 23, 2024
Thank you for your ongoing support, and we hope you will continue to enjoy NieR Re[in]carnation until the end.
For more information, please check the following link:https://t.co/tOVT9pyqvu#NieR #NieRReincarnation
In the meantime, some additional content drops are also in the pipeline, including the overarching Story Completion Countdown event that promises to significantly boost everyone’s progress with ten free daily summons and generous weekly gem gifts. Much like its name implies, the newly started event will run until the arrival of the game’s final story chapter. Players will also have a chance to grab new character costumes each week for the duration of the promotion.
NieR Reincarnation Roadmap to the Final Chapter
The announcement of NieR Reincarnation‘s upcoming demise arrives less than a month after Square Enix decided to shut down two other mobile games: Engage Kill and Full Metal Alchemist Mobile. The former’s sunsetting came as a particular surprise to the fans, not least because Engage Kill was released less than a year before the publisher decided to scrap it.
But some of the company’s recent mobile projects didn’t even get that far. That ended up being the case with the internally developed Just Cause: Mobile that Square Enix canceled back in July 2023, while the game was still in beta. It is plausible that NieR Reincarnation won’t be the company’s last mobile project to end up on the chopping block in 2024.
by DOMINIK BOŠNJAK 23 Jan 2024
