Xenoblade Chronicles has become a major franchise for Nintendo in the short decade that it’s been around, thanks to two excellent mainline releases and an often unfairly overlooked spinoff, and clearly, neither they nor developers Monolith Soft have any plans to stop making new games in the series any time soon.
Speaking recently to Vandal, studio head and series creator Tetsuya Takahashi said that Monolith Soft wants to continue to focus on building up the Xenoblade Chronicles brand even further, which, one would assume, means they want to make more Xenoblade games. Takahashi says that though that’s taking up most of their attention right now, if the opportunity arose, he would like to also greenlight a smaller-scale game.
“From the point of view of giving Monolith Soft more variety, I would like to do a smaller-scale project if the opportunity arose,” he said. “But right now, I think we should focus on increasing the value of the brand that we have created with the Xenoblade Chronicles saga. Of course, if we manage to organize ourselves in a way that allows us to do so, I would also like to give a small-scale project a chance.”
It’s worth noting that back in 2018, Monolith Soft stated in very clear terms that they had “no firm plans for continuing the series” at the time– though given the commercial and critical success the IP has enjoyed, it’s not surprising that they and Nintendo want to continue investing in it.
Monolith have plenty of other irons in the fire as well. They recently got Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition out the gate, and are working on other projects as well. Takahashi recently confirmed that the studio has three separate development teams, one of whom is working on new game. Previous rumours have said that this will be a medieval fantasy RPG, though it’s possible that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has taken priority over that. Meanwhile, Monolith is also assisting with the development of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s sequel, just as they did with the first game.