Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki has a "strong will" to make an Armored Core 6 follow-up, because "there's still room for improvement"

FromSoftware president and frequent director Hidetaka Miyazaki claims that the studio's mecha-action series Armored Core has a very sturdy future ahead, unless the game's dystopian vision comes to pass.

The Armored Core series began life in the late 1990s with massive explosions, excessive oil spillage, and anti-corporate themes - all timeless ideas that powered the big mechs across almost three decades before Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon dropped in 2023 to much acclaim and the studio's second-biggest PC launch to date. 

"The Armored Core series is very important to FromSoftware," Miyazaki said in an interview with IGN Japan, translated by FandomWire. "We have a strong will to continue it in the future. I believe Armored Core 6 was a success." 

But despite pleasing fans with mechs big enough to cover half of Elden Ring's map, the famed director reckons "not everything was perfect" in the game. "There is still room for improvement, so I have no intention of stopping there," Miyazaki adds. Armored Core 6 enjoyed a bunch of post-launch updates that added ranked matches and much-needed buffs for certain cool weapons, but has yet to receive the proper expansions that FromSoftware's SoulsBorne games usually do. 

Retaining and empowering talent is what helped the studio release AAA games so rapidly, according to Miyazaki, so the studio could feasibly work on the Elden Ring DLC or another project simultaneously with an Armored Core 7, which sounds like an inevitability at this point. 

FromSoftware's next release is Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, which arrives next month on June 21.

As Miyazaki remains cagey about Shadow of the Erdtree’s length, Elden Ring DLC theorists reckon the 30-song soundtrack is enough of a clue.