Update: After Saith played the dismissal with the rumors of the fans, the event has revealed what was under the black band: it is the number of sales of Near: Automata, which has sold seven million copies throughout The world since its launch in 2017.

Original news: Yoke Saith, producer of Square Enix in Valkyrie Profile, Dragon Quest XI and the Near saga, has published an image on Twitter that points to a possible announcement about the future of Yoko Taro’s series.

This weekend is held at the Tokyo Garden Theater Japanese El Near: Automata Fan Festival, an annual event focused on the Near saga in which, according to the same producer, ads were not expected about new franchise games. However, Saith himself has now published an image with the logos in a row of Near: Replica and Near: Automata, followed by the fair space for the logo of another game that, in this case, is covered by a great black band.

Of course, this has caused the reaction of much of the community to see it as a possible announcement about the future of the saga. This case has caused the public to echo the case of Kingdom Hearts 4, which was also presented during an event of the series (the 20th anniversary) after showing an image with a covered logo.

Although Saith’s contradictory messages do not guarantee a new announcement, Square Enix’s history with these events shows that they like to play disguise in this regard (as also happened, in fact, with Dragon Quest XII). It is also inevitable to add that Automata is still the last installment of the franchise (beyond the remake of the first) and five and a half years ago of its launch, so it would not be unreasonable to think about receiving news about what is about to come.

Near has been gaining a lot of entity over the last years thanks, especially, to this recent delivery of 2017, something that has ended up deriving in its transmedia expansion even with its own anime. Advances have already been leaving his announcement at the beginning of the year, the last one focused on Adam and Eve, Automata antagonists. You can take a look down here: