Sega CCO: No current plans for Yakuza 5 in the West

Sega Sammy CCO Toshihiro Nagoshi recently told Edge that the Yakuza development team is focusing on their Japan-exclusive PS3 and PS4 launch title, Yakuza Ishin, rather than localizing 2012's Yakuza 5 for Western audiences.

[nick309]

Importing then, im studying japanese just for the yakuza series.

[dedicatedtogamers]

I'm puzzled why Japanese devs spend time and money making games for their local market - which has been on the decline over the past 5 years, specifically the console market. And then these devs turn around and complain about low sales and faltering finances. Well, duh! Ya think? You spend tens of millions making a game that only gets released in one tiny market.

SEGA in particular has been very bad about this. No localization (not even on PSN) for Valkyria Chronicles 3. No plans for Phantasy Star Vita coming to the West. And now no plans for Yakuza 5 coming to the West.

[jetlian]

they dont spend as much as western devs. think about how much could it cost to change ingame text to english? in todays world google can half way do it for you.

japan is on something. dead souls failed because sega purposely chose to weaken the guns. Dont they know in the west shooting is popular! you cant release sorry shooting games over here.

whats funny is vanquish and binary domain both have decent shooting

[Sharius]

that's how japanese market work, a lot of good stuff are for japan's market only

[cleft5]

I look forward to the day that the entire lead executives at Sega gets fired. Maybe then we can finally get some of their best titles in the West.

[Inception]

Well you can't fully blame japanese devs for doing that way. Because there's a lot of factor why japanese devs don't want to localize their games:

1) Western gamers got nuts with shooter / FPS. Look at those CoD / BF sales and compare it to Ni no Kuni, Tales of Xillia, Dragon's Crown, or Demon's / Dark Souls sales. No wonder japanese devs got wrong perception of what western gamers want!

2) Localize games needs a lot of money (copyright etc) and yen to dollar currency isn't good. So if your games doesn't sell in the west, than how the fuck you can cover the cost?! And if you can't cover it than you sooner or later you must closed the shop. In the end, this is about how to survive.

3) I hate to admit but the rising of casual / mobile games also took a part of this problem.

[showtimefolks]

damn Sega, i always bought all yakuza games new and this is how you reward us?

[TheCagyDies]

noooooooooooooooooooooooo

[King-Prodigy-X]

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! Fuck You Sega just Fuck You.

[ZodTheRipper]

And people were glad that Sega aquired ATLUS...

[rambi80]

In all fairness, this series has never had good sales in the west, and there have been quite a few of them.

Its sad, but it is understandable.

[Ashlen]

I can't even begin to say how happy I am Sega bought Atlus. /s

[sashimi]

PLS don't remind me...i just forgot about that for a bit and now i'm raging about that again...

[Man-E-Faces]

With region free hardware like Vita, PS3, PS4, why don't they just have a text translation during the development. Let the fans just import instead of losing thousands of sales. I doubt a text translation costs that much or is difficult to do, considering there's fan made translation's on YouTube.

[jetlian]

thats what ive been saying for years. sega wants atleast 100k worth in sales. it shouldnt cost more than 20k to pay someone to subtitle it.

they should have someone at the end of the games development come and do it. Less than a week or two to change

[ShaunCameron]

How is Sega losing thousands of sales when those thousands of sales aren't enough to cover localization costs? Besides, none of the Yakuza games ever sold that well outside of Japan.

[showtimefolks]

really yakuza 3-4 sold pretty well considering those games came out with no advertising and a year or more after original Japanese release

it doesn't cost that much for sega to get the games out in west so even if the games sell 300k-500k that's more than good enough

[Inception]

It's not that simple. SEGA must pay double the fee of japanese voice actors and tons of popular brand, because SEGA want's to bring them outside of japan. Just look at all those real cameo of japanese celebrities, popular franchise from drink, noodles, clothes, magazine, and even store like Don Quijote.

If the problem only text translation, than i'm sure SEGA already localize Yakuza 5 in a heartbeat.

[tiffac008]

But they always remove some of those content from the Yakuza releases. I think Sega just got burned bad with Dead Souls and is using that as a barometer but they don't realize is a lot of the fanbase didn't want Dead Souls but the next number of the series which is 5.

Sega always know how to kill or not localize their great franchises and now Yakuza is a casualty, unless another party steps in.

[Inception]

Lol at the disagree

@tiffac008

Cmiiw, SEGA only cut some history puzzle and hostess club in Yakuza 3 because of time constraint and they think the concept of hostess club is still a taboo for western gamer. But for Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls they didn't cut any content, cmiiw.

But maybe just like you said, they got burned of how bad Dead Souls sold in the west.

[yewles1]

Too much to bear... T_T

[Freddy_Millz1]

No current plans on me giving any of my hard earned money to Sega.

Grats guys, everyday you are slowly climbing the shit pile to stand shoulder to shoulder with Capcom.

[ShaunCameron]

Sega is not Capcom. They don't water down their IP's to pander to Westerners like Capcom did with Lost Planet, Dead Rising, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, etcetera.

[jetlian]

for this post and the one above. 1 it shouldnt cost much to add subtitles given every game in the last l dont know 10 years has some kind or another.

2 yakuza games have sold over 100k at times just not more than japan.3 capcom didn't water down LP or DR because they came out this gen and the newer games are more complex.

RE isn't even watered down, it simply is more action based. DMC is the only real draw back. most people dont like capcom because of dlc

edit:the whole well japanese voice actors this and that doesn't matter.

[snitch_puck]

What the Fuck Sega. Just, What.The.Fuck.

[Sharius]

they had hard time to find translator indeed

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Sega made another statement with this;

"We have no plans to make money either. So we won't be localizing anything that could be a success."

[NarooN]

LOL.

[johny5]

No Yakuza Ishin for the west either?

[tiffac008]

I think Nagoshi is looking into localizing Ishin since its a stand alone and a launch window title but at the expense of Yakuza 5 which is the sad part.

[3xkrazy]

Can't wait to play their next Sonic game, then the next one after that, then the next one after that, etc. Etc. /s

[denero1]

yyayyy this company now owns atlus yessssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssssss

/s

get ready for persona games that never get localized due to "lower then expected sales expectations"

[matrixman92]

all subtitles, digital only release...problem solved

[SSJBen]

The issue isn't just with localizing the game and getting subs in. You guys are looking at just the tip of the iceberg.

There's also another problem where the voice actors and actresses are bounded by contract where their work may not exist outside of Japan. Different agencies has different policies, some of which makes no sense at all.

SEGA can make an effort to negotiate with all parties involved, but really... what's in it for them? The time, money and effort, yet the profit isn't even going to be half of that. It's a business decision and it's a silly one, but SEGA isn't EA with bottomless pockets.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Don't try to make it sound like rocket science, it isn't. Many JPN devs/publishers manage to do it with no hiccups or very short delays. Sega has no excuse, they're just being lazy.

[SSJBen]

Lol... if so then why are you western gamers still complaining about "I wish they localize xxx game"?

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Every game I say that about happens to be a Sega game. LOL

[Dagobert]

And they bought Atlus. Good lord...

[pyramidshead]

It's like they want their business to dissolve or something lol.

Western markets want the games = extra sales, comes on Sega!

[ShaunCameron]

The same Western markets that only support games when they're at bargain-bin price? LOL.

[CocoWolfie]

right so fuck all the people who bought yakuza 1, 2, 3, 4, or dead souls? ^-^ ..but really they have people telling them everyday on social networking sites to release yakuza 5 in the west, they have comments in places like this, and yet they still refuse, sigh :/

[reaperman]

I have read that some people even downloaded the Japanese version of Yakuza 5 just to be able to play it. And that the reason was, why should we pay to play it when we can't really understand it due to in being in Japanese. If it was localised so we could understand it then we would have bought it. So basically Sega have lost sales from these people unless they localise it. I don't condone that people are downloading it so that they can play the game but I can kind of understand their reason for it.
If they don't localise Ishin for the western market then I can see Sega failing on the PS4 because nobody gives a toss these days about a shitty blue hedgehog. People want decent games these days and if Sega can't be bothered letting people get these games then they may as well close their doors and leave the gaming industry.

[TenkoTAiLS]

They aren't on a good track record.

Valkryria Chronicles 3 - "no plans to release in the west"

Phantasy Star Online 2 - "no plans to release in the west even with a fully translated version of the game being made available to Taiwan etc"

Phantasy Star NOVA on PSVita - "no plans to release in the west"

Yakuza Ishin - "no plans to release in the west"

Yakuza HD Collection - "no plans to release in the west"

Yakuza 5 - "no plans to release in the west"

And then there was Project Diva and Anarchy Reigns..both were going to be no shows in the west until huge fan campaigns made then change their minds a couple months after original Japanese release.

And people still trust they will keep releasing Atlus games in the west...pfft.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

PSO2 is actually more like "Delayed indefinitely"
It was initially slated for a Q1 2013 release (Jan-Mar).

[hazelamy]

wow a sega title where they have "no plans for the west".
fucking shocker.

it's ironic sega started out as an american company, supplying coin operated amusements to us airbases before WWII

i don't know where this bloody insular attitude they have lately came from.

seriously, if it's from sega and it's not sonic, we may never fucking see it in the west.

[koh123]

FUCK U SEGA FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SegaGamer]

Isn't this old news ? they said about 2 or 3 weeks ago that the game was not getting released outside Japan.

I don't get what the top dogs of SEGA are thinking really, they must hate money. It's either that or they hate everyone outside of Japan.

Still no Shenmue 3, zero news on Phantasy Star online 2 since they announced the delay and now this. They need a new leader.

[paul-p1988]

I can't say i'm surprised, it is Sega after all....

Still annoyed by it though, I WANT YAKUZA 5 AND YAKUZA 1+2HD DAMMIT!!

[P_Bomb]

WTF Sega! Yakuza3 & Yakuza4 sold just over and just under a million respectively. That's more than other japanese developed games like Dark Souls and MGS Rising sold on the 360. So what's the problem?

Saying they "owe it to PlayStation fans" for Ishin to be a PS4 launch game in Japan means nothing when they still owe everyone who bought Yakuza3 & Yakuza4 in the west some sort of closure to that story. Yakuza; Dead Souls was an eleworlds "RDR:Undead Nightmare" spinoff that meant nothing, hence why I didn't buy it. Same with Ishin. A Feudal era "prequel" is too far out of continuity for me. Yakuza5 is canon though. Chronological. Evolution. I'd buy it day one. Nagoshi is backing the wrong horses.