yakuza series

SEGA Holds Reddit AMA for Yakuza Series, Talks Localization of Recently Announced Titles & More

As Yakuza series gains more prominence in the West, SEGA held a Reddit AMA session in which several PR representatives from the company answered a magnitude of fan questions – from localization of past titles to recently announced games, and more.

When asked if the recently announced Yakuza Kiwami 2, Fist of the North Star game, and Yakuza Online will make it to the West, SEGA’s Sam Mullen answered:

When it comes to the titles that RGG Studios recently announced, we don’t have anything to announce at this time for the West.

That said, we did open a survey to measure the Western response to these titles, and we gained some very interesting insights from that. So these are on our radar, we know there’s fans out there who want this content, but again, nothing to announce at this time.

One Reddit user was curious to know why Kenzan, Ishin, and the HD Collection were never localized, in response to which Mullen explained:

Kenzan was in a period that was before my time, so I honestly can’t really state why that never came over. If I had to venture a guess, it was that it was going to be complicated and the expectations were not high at the time. But like I said, I wasn’t there.

For Ishin, the situation is actually quite complicated and multifaceted, but let me explain it from the point of view of focus and lineup.

When we restarted our whole Yakuza approach coming off the end of Y5, one of the over-arching goal was to get to bring the English releases of Y0, Kiwami, and Y6 as close to the Japanese releases as possible. This means we have had a very aggressive production and release schedule, as you guys might have noticed.

Ishin is a very large and complicated game from a localization perspective, one. Two, there just has been no where to slot it for release to ensure the game gets the attention and exposure it needs without posing a risk to itself and other franchise titles.

We do know that the fanbase has their eyes on these titles, but we just don’t have anything to announce about them at this time.

Mullen later added that he wasn’t a part of any of the decisions involving the HD Collection either.

The full AMA answers many other interesting questions including why there was a long gap between Yakuza: Dead Souls and Yakuza 5 so make sure to head over to the link below for more.

[Source: Reddit]

TRENDING