Last month Fire Emblem: Three Houses officially launched on Nintendo Switch to great commercial and critical success all over the world.

While Fire Emblem as a series has always been a hit with the Japanese audience, it wasn’t until Fire Emblem Awakening for the 3DS that the series began to gain traction overseas. One would think that the success of Awakening and Three Houses shows that the developers have finally figured out the secret formula for global success.

However, in an interview with Gamespot, Fire Emblem: Three Houses director Toshiyuki Kusakihara revealed that they actually have no idea what exactly they are doing right.

I don’t know. I actually don’t know why it’s been so accepted by so many people all over the world.

We don’t have the confidence to say: ‘Oh! As long as we keep doing this thing, then the game will be popular!’ There’s nothing like that.

Without anything solid to pin the Fire Emblem series’ popularity on, Kusakihara believes that all they can really do it keep striving to push the series in new directions, and perhaps that may be the reason behind its newfound global success.

When we develop the game, we just strive to make it something beyond what people can imagine, that might help in making it popular.

What do you think makes recent Fire Emblem titles popular overseas? Let us know in the comments below.