Former Sega CCO Toshihiro Nagoshi explained in a recent interview how Sega rejected the first pitches for a Yakuza game back in the early 2000s.
Could you believe a world without the Yakuza and Like a Dragon game series? Knowing what I know now, I would have missed all the meme content from the games. In a recent interview with Weekly Ochiai, former Sega chief creative officer Toshihiro Nagoshi explained how the first Yakuza game struggled to get greenlit by Sega. He detailed the hard journey the series took to be made because the pitch kept getting rejected and how Sega was struggling to sell games that were doing well globally. Of course, the answer was Yakuza.
“This led to a mindset of making games that would appeal to the masses, games that could sell anywhere and to anyone,” Nagoshi explained (as translated by Automaton). He went on to explain that back then, this “mindset” was not the right solution to the issue of the company’s sales. He noted how major developers/publishers “flat out rejected” the making of the first Yakuza game because they felt it would not have global appeal.
“After all, it was completely contrary to what I mentioned earlier about attracting the masses. Children wouldn’t be able to play it, and it wasn’t catered to women nor overseas audiences. In this sense, there was no way for it to be approved without resistance.” Nagoshi stated the matter the company told him about. He admitted he had to pitch the game at least three times before Sega relented and gave the green light for the first Yakuza game.
For a company that was thriving on its iconic Sonic the Hedgehog games, I could see how this was a different direction for the company to take a chance on. The blue-and-yellow game company was doing really well with other games at the time, like Virtua Fighter, Shenmue and Crazy Taxi.
In a weird way, Sega needed that first Yakuza game to come out in 2005 and shake up its game lineup. It became a weird mashup of an adult Shenmue meets Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row, leaning more on fun city exploration and action. This was also a time when Grand Theft Auto III was out since 2001.
I would argue these two games were two sides of the same coin, and many guys I knew were very interested in these kinds of games at the time. Of course, GTA III was based in America, whereas Yakuza was based in Japan’s criminal underground. Still, the Yakuza games had an overseas appeal, probably with the rise of Japanese culture crossing over en masse as well.
Now, we know Nagoshi’s ultimate gamble led to much success. In late 2023, Sega stated how the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series had sold 21.3 million games, and earlier this year, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth shipped one million copies in its first week alone. Nagoshi left Sega in October 2021 to set up his own company, the NetEase-backed Nagoshi Studio. His team is currently working on their first game, but he ensured it would still feel like the previous games that he led but not necessarily something resembling a Like a Dragon game too closely.
“Obviously, we’re not going to create something exactly the same, but I do understand there are expectations from people based more on me as a creator and my personality, so people want to see my tastes and my personality in my new games,” Nagoshi shared with VGC via a translator. “Obviously, I will not betray my fans in that sense – I will create something with my personality and make a dramatic game, stuff like that – and my taste and personality will be reflected in the game. I can’t tell you exactly what genre it’ll be or what the game is going to be like, but I will not betray my fans.”
