Kadokawa applied to register a new trademark related to Sword Art Online, “Echoes of Aincrad,” in Japan on April 11, 2025. The trademark belonged to the two categories typically associated with video games: 9 and 41.

---

ROCC TALK: If the typical trends are followed, I’m worried.

Sword Art Online has a different developer working on the handheld and console games of each world. Aquria developed the based on Aincrad (Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment, Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment, and Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization) and Underworld (Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris and Sword Art Online: Last Recollection), Artdink handled the Alfheim games (Sword Art Online: Lost Song and Accel World vs. Sword Art Online: Millennium Twilight), and Dimps tackled Gun Gale Online (Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet). If Echoes of Aincrad is meant to be the next Sword Art Online game, it’s possible that it will (a) be associated with the Progressive movies and (b) be developed by Aquria.

Aquria’s development record is mostly anime games, including games for Negima, Kimi no Todoke, Kuroko’s Basketball, and of course, Sword Art Online. Unfortunately, three of their SAO games are the games I liked the least; I thought Infinity Moment was terrible, Hollow Fragment put me to sleep, and Alicization Lycoris is passable at best, even after two years of patches. However, I enjoyed the small amount I played of Hollow Realization, and Last Recollection proved that Aquria is capable of learning from their mistakes. 1.5 out of 5 is still terrible, so I’ll be cautiously optimistic if Echoes of Aincrad follows past trends.

If trends aren’t followed, I’m a lot more interested in how Echoes of Aincrad will turn out.