Many trends/patterns in the video game world are easy to notice if you know where to look. One of the most common ones for decades is that certain gaming franchises do better in Japan than in other regions. Some are so niched that they never get out of that area. Other times, it takes a bit hit for a game series to become popular worldwide. Monster Hunter, Fire Emblem, and others can be included in that list. Another one that has seen a significant boost in popularity in the West is the Yakuza series. The game went from a cult-classic feeling to one of the best franchises SEGA publishes.
But what was it that led the games to get popular suddenly? Well, it depends on who you ask. If you were to ask the director of the game, Masayoshi Yokoyama, he feels it had to do with the games coming to the Xbox Game Pass:
“It’s hard to tell if that’s thanks to multiplatform or if it’s because we changed the genre and protagonist from Yakuza: Like a Dragon as a new series, or both. Personally, I do think subscriptions like Game Pass, allowing people to play the previous games over the years, have contributed largely to the increase in audience.”
Undoubtedly, the Xbox Game Pass has been a godsend for many gamers. If you’ve never tried the service for yourself, you pay a monthly rate and have access to tons of gaming titles. But it’s not just older games. You get recent releases as well. You can play them for as long as they’re on the service, and then when you’re done with one title, you can move to the next without having to do much. Gamers and critics have praised the service for all the gaming options it allows, and that appears to have been a big reason why Yakuza has taken off in the West.
Regardless of the reason, the team behind the franchise is hard at work on not one but two new games in the series. Plus, they’ve rebranded the games to be called Like A Dragon going forward, bringing the game into the modern era. The first is Like A Dragon Ishin. It will be set in the time of the samurai at the beginning of the industrialization of Japan. Then, there’s Like A Dragon 8, which will continue the main storyline of the series with some familiar faces at the forefront.
Either way, hopefully, the franchise will continue to grow and be successful. It might have taken them a while to get to this point, and they’ve had to make some big swings along the way, but it was worth it. Now we must wait and see what these games will be like when they arrive.
Source: Twinfinite
