Industry insider Emily Rogers - who has previously shared Nintendo leaks that later proved to be true - believes an as-yet-unannounced Fire Emblem game is not only in development at Intelligent Systems, but they also believe it’s “nearly finished with its development” and may be out as early as October this year. “Will it be an October 2022 release or an early 2023 release (February/March)?” Rogers wrote on Famiboards.com (thanks, VGC). “I’ve mentioned before that this game is nearly finished with its development. IS has had over 3+ years to develop this game, and they received assistance from a support studio.” That said, Rogers acknowledged that with an already busy release schedule on Xenoblade and Bayonetta 3, Nintendo may decide to “move FE to early 2023” - although Nintendo’s prior form intimates it’s not scared of releasing more than one instalment of the same franchise in quick succession, either. “Let’s rewind the clock back to the year 2017,” Rogers posited. “During that year, Nintendo released TWO Fire Emblem games: Fire Emblem Warriors and Fire Emblem Echoes. Who says history can’t repeat itself again?” Nintendo’s hugely-successful Fire Emblem Heroes is close to generating a spending total of $1bn, five years on from its launch in February 2017. As Tom reported at the time, sales data provided to Eurogamer shows the game has racked up more than $959m in global sales across the iPhone App Store and Google Play to date. This makes Fire Emblem Heroes the most lucrative mobile game launched by Nintendo to date, far ahead of Animal Crossing Pocket Camp ($267m to date) and Mario Kart Tour ($259m to date).
