Strong sales of the 3DS role-playing game Fire Emblem: Awakening have helped save the 22-year-old series from outright cancellation, the game's producer has said.

In an interview with Spanish magazine Hobby Consola (via the Serenes Forest forums), Yamagami said that Nintendo told developer Intelligent Systems that diminishing series sales could have made Fire Emblem: Awakening the last entry in the series.

"No doubt. Truth be told, [series] sales are dropping," said Yamagami. "The sales manager of Nintendo, Mr. Hatano, told us that this could be the last Fire Emblem. Due to this progressive descend on sales, they told us that if the sales of this episode stayed below 250,000 copies, we'd stop working on the saga."

"I remember when I came back from the meeting," continued Yamagami, "and told the team 'my God, what are we gonna do?! The end has come!' Our reaction was clear: if this was going to be the last Fire Emblem, we had to put [in] everything we always wanted to include."

Nintendo hasn't formally announced whether there will be a follow-up to Fire Emblem: Awakening but previously stated that the game has sold over 240,000 copies in North America alone. When Fire Emblem launched in the UK, its limited-edition hardware bundle led to a 49 percent increase in 3DS sales.

For more information on Fire Emblem: Awakening, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.