The head of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the game’s creator, admitted that he didn’t expect Yakuza 8 (it’s just a different name, but that’s the gist!) to sell so well right out of the gate.

Masayoshi Yokoyama, the director of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (who also worked on Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and helped write the story) told Japanese publication 4gamer that he had absolutely no expectations that the game would sell so well from day one, as he was used to the franchise selling at a slower pace, but as the public started talking about it, the customer base grew.

“We put out a press release about how [Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth] sold over a million copies worldwide in the first week of release, but that’s really a speed we’ve never seen before. Like a Dragon games tend to sell in the long run, rather than in the short run. This has been the case since the beginning of the series. It has an adult player base, so there’s no rush, you know? People hear about the games from their friends, they stumble upon them, and that’s how the titles grow. That’s why the way [Infinite Wealth] started was quite surprising to me,” Yokoyama said.

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth was released on January 26 and is a cross-generation game, as SEGA released it not only for PlayStation 5, Xbox series and PC, but also for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which is surprising more than three years after the release of the current-gen consoles, as studios tend to leave the previous generation of consoles behind.

The lesson is that Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has to accept that the Yakuza name hasn’t really helped them mainstream the IP, but with the name change they now have the opportunity to make it happen.

Source: VGC, 4gamer