1UP:For Sega, the lowest-hanging fruit is the tastiest.
You know a trend is getting out of hand when even the complaints about it start to grate on the nerves; that said, I'm going to take it easy on the zombie-game genre in this brief look at Sega's upcoming addition to the Yakuza series, Dead Souls. It's difficult to ignore the recent plague of zombie games, so there's no point in stating the obvious with empty complaints. Instead, why don't we attempt to figure out just what's inspiring all of them?
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Look at it this way, if the new ip fails to impress and sells like dirt then you can write it off.
If it succeeds, you've got a new successful ip now, Yay.
If Left 4 Yakuza is less than impressive and sells like dirt then they may irreversibly damn any future games (see Resistance 2 - Resistance 3 effect)
If Left 4 Yakuza succeeds it comes at the expense of core Yakuza fans that like their games zombie free (see tears of xbox 360 owners wanting Kinect to die because it took away our exclusives)
Non-canon zombie slaying action with awesome Yakuza characters, what's not to love?
It's a game that doesn't take itself seriously .. it's a spin off to please fans.
You can say this game is the beta version of Binary Domain and they made money off of it in Japan as well.
And I say that as a Yakuza fan.