The producer of the series has also shot down the rumour about a potential sequel to Yakuza: Like A Dragon, while the franchise prepares for its 15th franchise.

Archipel Caravan interviewed Toshihiro Nagoshi, who also happens to be the chief creative officer of SEGA, not to mention the head of the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the team behind the series. In the twenty-five minute video, Nagoshi talks about how Japanese games tend to sell worse in the West than on local soil, which is why they set out to create a franchise that could have a loyal player base.

They succeeded: „The Yakuza series celebrates this year its 15th anniversary. With more 12 million units sold worldwide, it is a critical success praised for the story, action and sometimes over-the-top gameplay of its games,” quoting the video’s description. Archipel Caravan focuses on Japanese creators, which is why they previously got Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil series, for example, to talk

Although the West has received Yakuza: Like a Dragon (except for the PlayStation 5 version; the game is called Ryu Ga Gotoku 7 in Japan, meaning it’s one of the main titles in the series), there are already people thinking about what’s next. All of this started from a tweet by Masa Yokoyama, allegedly – he wrote that it’s time to get on with the next thing, dubbed Yakuza: Like an Ashura, featuring a young Watase. Yokoyama responded to this a day later, saying that while he can enjoy such forged rumours, he is not involved with Like a Dragon (it was directed by Ryosuke Horii and produced by both Hiroyuki Sakamoto and Daisuke Sato), so he doesn’t even have influence onto the next game in the series, adding that he would never call the game Ashura, to begin with.

Also on Twitter, the studio announced that they will celebrate Yakuza’s 15th birthday. In the broadcast, they will reminisce, and give us details about future developments of the franchise. Takaya Kuroda and Kazuhiro Nakaya (the actors behind Kiryu and Ichiban Kasuga, respectively) will also be present. The broadcast will happen on December 8, at 3 AM Pacific.

At this rate, Sato’s comment (he’d like to make a Sonic the Hedgehog game with a different feel to it…) might become a reality…

Source: DualShockers, DualShockers, VG247

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