Sega’s Consolidated Financial Statement is out and Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 has sold 590,000 units!
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio have outdone themselves with this release selling 30k more than RGG4 in less amount of time!
Let’s pore over previous fiscal year numbers:
Ryu ga Gotoku 5: Yume, Kanaeshimono | Japan | PS3 | 590k
Yakuza: Dead Souls | (Japan / Europe / US) | PS3 | 550k
Ryu ga Gotoku 4: Densetsu wo Tsugumono | Japan | PS3 | 560k
Kurohyo: Ryu ga Gotoku Shinsyo | Japan | PSP | 250k
We’re 153 days since the release of Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 in Japan.
So it’s not the longest time in between releases but still no news from SEGA yet.
Trust me as soon as we know I’ll be writing about it!
Amazing Yakuza genderswap art by @ToReMa7
I figured it was time for an update on our Facebook campaign.
We’ve stagnated a little bit on our bring yakuza 5 West Facebook campaign but on the bright side we do have Sega’s attention. They know it exists and are watching!
Over the last month or so we’ve had a couple of shares from smaller news sites and even operation rainfall gave us their support. To all of you I say thanks!
Now for the next part. We need to go mainstream! We’ve got a campaign here with nearly 3000 Likes, not a small number by any petition standards, but we can do better! Remember to share the image encourage your friends to like and share.
Tweet the editors of major video game news sites (Polygon, Destructoid, Kotaku, IGN, Joystiq, Gamespot, The Escapist, et al) and let them know what we’re trying to do. That page has been seen by over 100,000 people yet only a little under 3000 have Liked it!
Most of all I want to say a simple Thank You to the fans who have already help spread the word.
Long time Yakuza fans may remember DragonofDojima17. This guy was instrumental in bringing Yakuza 3 to the west. Campaigning to Sega for a long time before we got anything.
He was well known on the forums and in Yakuza fan communities and even got interviewed on Sega’s official blog! For being the most tenacious fan and supporter of Yakuza in the west.
He was more than a little disheartened when Yakuza 3 was released with all of its cuts but after Yakuza 4/Dead Souls making their way out over here he’s back to campaign for Yakuza 5 claiming it to be the “best game in the series”. Bold statement that is shared by a lot of the fans that have played the Japanese version.
How can you get involved with his campaign? If you’re a YouTuber create a video response and add tags “yakuza, sega, gaming, bringyakuzawest”.
Basically get talking about it!
Here are some amazingly hi-res screenshots of Kazuma Kiryu in Hot Shots Golf 6 via DengekiOnline.
The DLC should be released today on the PSN in Japan and cost ¥500
If this is released internationally I may reconsider my want to buy this game.
Takaya Kuroda posted images from the Famitsu 2012 awards where he received an award for his voice acting of Kazuma Kiryu!
Along with game director Masayoshi Yokoyama getting an award for Ryu Ga Gotoku 5.
Congrats guys!
Happy Birthday Takaya Kuroda!
Kazuma Kiryu’s seiyu is 48 years old today (April 17th JST)!
Want to wish him a happy birthday? Here’s how:
Send him a tweet (or retweet us)
or
Here’s how to leave him a comment on his blog:
- Scroll down to the bottom of this article
- Click the button that says コメントをする
- A popup window will open
- From top to bottom the fields you can fill out are:
- Comment Title
- Comment
- Captcha (Just copy the numbers)
- Your username (Don’t need to sign up any will do)
- Your website URL (if you have one) - Next click the 投稿する button
- An admin needs to approve your comment so it could take some time to show up!
Looking at our traffic we’ve had an amazing year. Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 was announced and released. My 2nd daughter was born (on Ryu Ga Gotoku 5’s release day!). Our campaign to get Sega to bring Yakuza 5 to the west has been a decent success and we’ve expanded the community exponentially from where we started. Since starting this site I’ve seen at least 5 new Yakuza fan sites start up in multiple languages and the Sega community has welcomed us with open arms.
The stories/pages below were our most viewed. This is what you guys loved the most in the last year. A mix of serious stories, silliness, crafts and information. Thank you dear readers for giving us such a great first year.
Lego Kamurocho
This started as a passion project for me. The idea was to use the Lego creation kit to design a piece of Tokyo. My original designs for this were a massive chunk of Kamurocho that was way too cost prohibitive to build. The design was streamlined and parts number reduced until it was a small playset that still managed to capture the feeling of the game.
Yakuza animated PS3 theme
This one was my first time using the PS3 theme creation toolkit. Since I wanted to make something that could be passed off at a glance as an official theme I put a ton of attention to detail in to it. Not many people realized when they first installed the theme that the light changes based on the time of day!
Ryu Ga Gotoku 5’s minigames
The giant list of minigames playable in Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 is insane! Back when they were announced I got the scoop early and, with the help of some fans on our twitter got them all listed. Turns out you guys love your minigames as this was our 3rd most viewed article in the last year!
5 changes I love in Kurohyou 2 that need to be in Yakuza 5
After picking up the completely Japanese Yakuza PSP spinoff and fumbling my way through the menus and story these were the things I came to appreciate most about it. A portable title with a different producer than the main series they were free to experiment and made a ton of wonderful changes that are unique to the title!
Sega’s Official stance on Yakuza HD & 5; No plans.. yet
An off handed comment about localization of Yakuza 5 and HD collection by a Sega employee got Yakuza fans mad. We reached out to Sega to clerify their comment and they let us know that Yakuza 5 and HD are japan only, for now. But as mentioned if there is a fan outcry we could see them in the west.
What’s new in Yakuza 5
We ran down the biggest changes to the series ever to give readers a taste of what they can expect in Yakuza 5.
Bring Yakuza 5 West
The post that rallied multiple communities. What started as a grass roots campaign soon over 75,000 people with nearly 2,500 likes and over 1000 shares! I don’t think we’ve ever seen such a concentrate of Yakuza Fans in one place before. We showed Sega there is an audience and every day it continues to grow.
Yakuza Demake
An 8bit demake of Yakuza for the NES. Before I checked our stats I had no idea this would be on our most popular list!
Valentines Day 2013
This set of Valentines day cards were the perfect gift for Yakuza lovers on that special day.After card number 4 coming up with phrases proved tricky. Kudos to Hallmark’s writers it’s a tough job!
Senior Producer, Yasuhiro Noguchi, Leaves SEGA of America
Yas was the lead on the localization team for Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls. He was passionate and always tried to provide the best the series had to offer in its most complete form. It’s thanks to him nothing was cut from Yakuza 4 and Dead Souls was released in the west at all. It was a sad day for us all when he left the studio.
Feels like a Yakuza 4 night. On a 55inch screen it looks gorgeous!
SEGA Chief Communications Officer, Toshihiro Nagoshi
1. — “I genuinely felt that the specs, namely the high image quality, that enable the development of high quality products, are amazing. I’ve been in this field for 23 years, and back in the past, the current specs would have been considered a fantasy. But at the same time, there are a lot of hurdles that need to be overcome to expand that fantasy to its limit, so there is a certain tenseness that keeps me from simply being overjoyed. I’m also aware that users want to see that fantasy taken to the limit.”
2. — “I’m looking forward to the functions and services that stimulate the ‘user community’ and share game enjoyment. The ‘online’ component of games has been a standard for a while now, but I’m looking forward to services that utilize that component to dynamically cultivate user connectivity.”
3. — “To sum it up in a single phrase, it’d be ‘a great emotional experience shared by many people.’ It used to be the norm in all areas that the bigger the numbers, the worse it looks, and the better it looks, the smaller the numbers—the question now will be how to escape that dilemma? I’m going to give it my best.”
Via: Kotaku
(http://m.kotaku.com/5991646/once-again-even-more-japanese-developers-weigh-in-on-the-ps4)
Anonymous asked: TSSZNews covered your efforts with Yakuza 5. Congrats. They also said that SEGA said they wouldn't bring it to the west. Is this true?
Sega staff have said a couple of times that Yakuza 5 is a Japan only title (for now) with no current localization plans. If there is an obvious market for the series in the west they will bring it over.
Aaron Webber, Associate Brand Manager at Sega of America, says:
“Right now the best thing that can be done is to help spread the word on the series – tell your friends or others you think might enjoy them, and have them grab a copy of Y4 or Dead Souls.”
So that’s what we hope to do with the Facebook campaign. Get the word out and show Sega we want this game! Buy yourself Yakuza Dead Souls it’s actually a fun game and while not canon at all it is a great side story in to “what if” that has all the tropes and awesome story line of a Yakuza game and it’s only $20 NEW!
Yakuza 4, on the other hand, is no longer in print so prices on that one are about to go up. If you can find a copy buy it.
Official UFO Catcher game on Android. Get your club Sega fix wherever you are. Hopefully we’ll see an iOS version of this soon!
Had 4 hours of sleep and woke up to over 1000 likes! I’m impressed!
For getting 1000 likes I’ll share; on April 1st we’ll officially have our 1 year anniversary. We will be having a little contest to win some awesome Yakuza prizes!
8 hours since go live and we’ve hit over 500 likes and nearly 250 shares. You guys are doing awesomely!
Keep liking and sharing. Sega will know we want Yakuza 5 in the west!
Do what you can to help promote this. Tweet bloggers and post it on forums. Get the word out!
