Overseas Fans Make Up 70% Of Yakuza Audience
The creators attribute part of the games' success to good localization.
The Like a Dragon (formerly known as Yakuza) series has attracted many players all over the world and will most likely find new fans when Yakuza Gaiden, Yakuza 8, and the remake of Yakuza Ishin! get released.
At Tokyo Game Show 2022, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio revealed that 70% of the franchise's audience comes from overseas. The studio's Chief Producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto said that first Yakuza 0 was favorably received because it was localized well, and then Yakuza: Like a Dragon also sold very well overseas, so "it's no longer just a Japanese title."
The RGG Studio Head Masayoshi Yokoyama added that the creators had been asked by North American teams to never change the content just to appeal to the western audience.
The Americal localization team was praised by the creators, although Sakamoto mentioned they "can’t speak Japanese at all."
"It’s definitely high-quality localization, I think. We’ve been working with this team since Ryu ga Gotoku 0, and they’ve developed good methods. They can’t speak Japanese at all, but they provide us with very good translations. Like, you can still sense the goodness of Ryu ga Gotoku in it," he said.
Another reason behind Like a Dragon's rising popularity lies behind COVID-19 and streaming services getting more attention at the time.
"Now even Japanese people have streaming subscriptions and can watch overseas dramas as easily as they watch Japanese ones, and the notion of something being “aimed at xx type of people” is becoming more and more degraded, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter where something is set, or what it’s about, if it’s good it will find an audience," shared Yokoyama.
Yokoyama confessed the team regretted not releasing Like a Dragon: Ishin! outside Japan in the first place, so now, with the remake coming next year, fans everywhere will have a chance to enjoy the game.
Find out more from the interviews here and don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
Keep reading
You may find these articles interesting
