Yakuza 5 Campaign UPDATED 29/08/2014

Dear reader,

If I may could I direct your attention to this petition here, it is a petition requesting that Sega localize Ryu Ga Gotoku 5 or Yakuza 5 as it would be know here.

For any of you familiar with myself or members of the blog we hold the Ryu Ga Gotoku series in especially high regard, myself I am currently working on 2 related articles with more of a series planned for the future. 

So far all Sega have had to say on the subject of this and the latest title (Ishin) is that there is no word on them, they have said in the past there is no budget for it as the team are very small that create this masterpieces. 

A rumour back in Feb of this year was that ATLUS are actually translating Yakuza 5 for Sega but since that leaked it was neither confirmed or denied which is a shame as that would be outstanding news for a series that seems to be forgotten.

The most common theory is Sega has dropped localisations for the series after Dead Souls & Binary Domain didn't meet sales figures, this seems daft as Dead Souls was a spin off that is commonly thought of as the weakest entry and Binary Domain though an absolutely outstanding game, was held back due to generic graphic design and lack of advertisement.

A little research into this shows that Yakuza: Dead Souls sold 550,000 copies worldwide, looking around for figures for Yakuza 4 and it's estimated that it sold 0.90 million units worldwide, the differences between spin off and main are very apparent.

So please click the link, sign the petition and show Sega there is still a strong market for Ryu Ga Gotoku! 

UPDATED 21/07/2014

After much consideration due to a seemingly none stop barrage of negativity the future of this movement was seemingly up in arms, I spent my weekend playing Yakuza 4 just to remind myself why I was doing this & words with the editor have spurred me back into action!.

If I may can I direct your attention to THIS, this is a link to a movement called Day Of The Dragon. Complete details are found on there so I urge you all to read into this & actively join us at Otaku Gamers UK in joining this!. 

Once this is completed I shall move this campaign into phase 3 which will involve making contact with people at Sony/Sega in regards to DoD & the Petition we are pushing.

IF you feel this is futile or worthless don't participate but we don't need unhelpful comments about how "Meaningless" or "Pointless" this is!. 

    -Andi 

UPDATED 18/08/2014

Just a brief update to let any readers know what is planned in regards to this. We are currently awaiting on the results from the #DayOfTheDragon campaign, I have also started to make myself a fixture in the Sega Forum for Yakuza & have noticed an increase in users there. Hopefully the extra traffic may trigger interest for the series once again at Sega but it's nothing concrete.

Once/If we hear from Sega regards to the release then we can act further on this, there is talk of a 2nd #DayofTheDragon around the game's 2 year anniversary so we will be working on that alongside the creators of that campaign. 

To help raise awareness I'll be reviewing Ryu Ga Gotoku Ishin alongside my Kenzan! Diary which isn't dead just an influx of reviews has knocked it back somewhat. 

The campaign if im honest will more than likely see it's end coming into December/January, we have seen great results from this but unfortunately it's not hitting as many targets as originally planned and as such I need to know when to nip it in the bud before it takes a strain on the resources for the site. 

Nothing so far in set in concrete other than Kenzan Diary and eventual Ishin Review, thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope to be able to bring you more news as it comes 

-Andi  

UPDATED 29/08/2014

Just a brief update in regards to this campaign, with the announcement of Ryu Ga Gotoku/Yakuza 0 a member of the Sega Forum "City Hunter" has suggested a "Mass Tweetathon" aimed towards Atlus. 

City Hunter had this to say 

"This is just logical thinking, Sega bought Atlus, a software house but also a great publisher in the US with a great localization capacity.Atlus has its own fanbase, a fanbase that can make niche games very very successful (just look at the latest success, Dragon's Crown, a retail million seller, while other companies would have sold it as a cheap digital game for just 10000 downloads).

Yakuza series can become another success if it become an Atlus game in the west and sold to Atlus audience (and Yakuza fans of course).

Problem is that Atlus USA surely don't even know Yakuza or the state of the series, and that's the idea, let's contact Atlus via twitter asking if they can translate Yakuza 5.

If there are many request, they could start to take notice...

Whil we are waiting for the result of day of the dragon, we can do this, just send your Yakuza request to this twitter address: @AtlusUSA 

Using this Hashtag #ATLUSBringYakuzaWest"

So until we hear if #DayOfTheDragon has done anything we will also be tweeting in support of this! 

-Andi