Nioh 2 passes 2.5 million copies as the Nioh series turns five

In February 2022, Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja announced that Nioh 2 had passed 2.5 million copies sold worldwide. The news came with a round anniversary: the series turned five, since the first Nioh came out in February 2017.

The two games followed similar paths. The first Nioh launched as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, published by Sony outside Japan, and got a PC version the same year. Nioh 2, a prequel, arrived on PS4 on March 13, 2020 and, on February 5, 2021, received the Complete Edition for PlayStation 5 and PC, with all the downloadable content.

The series’ origin is one of the most curious in the industry. Nioh began development in 2004 for the PlayStation 3, as part of a multimedia project based on Oni, an unfinished screenplay by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Pre-production was long and turbulent, with several revisions. According to Team Ninja’s Yasuda, that first version “simply fell apart”, and the team had to start over from scratch.

Little remained of Kurosawa’s script: the setting, the blond-haired foreign protagonist and the basic idea. The final story came to be inspired by the life of William Adams, an Englishman who became a samurai in the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu during the Sengoku period. The definitive version began to be made in 2014, already for the PS4, and the game was shown to the public again in 2015, more than ten years after the project began. The result was well received by critics, with praise for the gameplay and visuals, although the story was considered confusing.

What came next

The first Nioh passed 3 million copies shipped, and the series got a third game: Nioh 3 came out on February 6, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and PC, with Tokugawa Takechiyo, grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu, as protagonist.

Source: Koei Tecmo / Team Ninja.