As the western part of the world continues to enjoy the latest Yakuza title, with more remakes on the way from the beloved franchise, the team over at Sega took a few moments to talk to fans during a recent Reddit AMA. With Yakuza Kiwami 2 preparing for its Japanese release, Yakuza Kiwami 1 coming to the NA and EU regions, and the announcement of a new Fist of the North Star title – there was a lot to discuss.
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There are a lot of things happening over with the Yakuza side of the Sega legacy, especially so over in Japan. This understandably made the question of localization come up quite a bit. Sam Mullen, one of the Sega representatives during the AMA, had this to say regarding the move to the west:
“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.”
The above response also applies to the recent announcement of the latest Fist of the North Star title, which is also currently only set up for a Japan release.
The selection of what or what hasn’t been chosen for a western release has seemed, in the past, as a bit random. When asked as to what goes into the selection process, and more to the point concerning releases such as Kenzan, Ishin, and the HD Collection, Mullen replied;
“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.”
A lot of the reader participation simply reiterated what many of us are thinking, and that’s “the West want more Yakuza games!” Of course Sega cheekily replied, “So … if we’re reading this right … you’re saying you want more Yakuza games?” This is how you get thrown controllers, Mullen.
To read more about what Mullen and the team had to say, you can check out the full transcript of the recent Reddit AMA right here.
