Though Sega has admitted that the video games are in the end for a niche market, the Yakuza sequence has managed to stay round for years and create lots of enthusiastic followers. The sequence was trapped on consoles till PC ports began showing simply a few years in the past, launching to nice critiques—simply check out our Yakuza 6 review. And now we all know the impression of lastly bringing Yakuza to PC, or not less than what number of copies had been bought.
Sega not too long ago held a management meeting which revealed Yakuza’s PC gross sales numbers. Because it began releasing the Yakuza PC ports in 2019, there have been a complete of two.8 million items of the sequence bought worldwide. Area of interest is a relative phrase for Sega, I suppose.
We reported back in 2020 that the sport sequence had reached 14 million gross sales on all platforms. Clearly there can have been a rise in that determine since then, however this new report doesn’t point out how the Yakuza video games are performing as a complete. What the report does go into, nevertheless, is the optimistic impact of releasing video games globally moderately than staggering Japanese and Western releases. International launches are clearly most well-liked for Western audiences as we have traditionally acquired video games months and even years after the Japanese launch. However that is perhaps about to alter.
Releasing Yakuza spin-off Misplaced Judgment within the West concurrently Japan noticed a 76% improve in its predecessor’s gross sales in Western nations. Beforehand, Sega launched the Western model at a later date—this increase in gross sales will hopefully persuade it to maintain launching these video games globally.
Sadly, Sega has already damaged our hearts by telling us that it has no plans to release 2021’s Lost Judgment on PC. Each video games within the spin-off sequence reviewed nicely and we’re maintaining our fingers crossed that the PC Yakuza gross sales push Sega to think about porting the Judgment video games over too.
What stays unclear is what the way forward for the Yakuza video games appear like long-term. Toshihiro Nagoshi and Daisuke Sato, two of the masterminds behind the video games, left Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio late last year. Nagoshi’s farewell message says the studio, upon their departure, will “improve the muse” they laid and “ship nice video games to the world”. The Yakuza series will continue as turn-based games however aside from that, however in any other case we’re nonetheless ready to see the place it goes subsequent.
Cheers, DSOG.
