Sega has shut down all official Yakuza sub sites outside of Japan. The only proof that they ever released a Yakuza game in the west is the forums and a Dead Souls page.

It’s looking grimmer by the day and I wish I could post some better news. I’m not going anywhere and my Yakuza love still burns! No matter what I’ll carry the torch for the western Yakuza Fans!

http://yakuzafan.com/post/62617991224/sega-has-shut-down-all-official-yakuza-sub-sites

And with this we most likely have seen the end of this IP in the west.... It is really a sad day. I waited with importing Yakuza 5 because I thought they will bring it over but I guess I don't have to do that anymore with 5 and later Isshin...

SEGApocalypse is happening.

Well!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

That's really disappointing. All of that is.

I wonder if a game like Yakuza had a chance in the west on the PC and on steam. I really hope Trails in the sky does well this year so developer can see that it maybe an option for Japanese niche games.

Also I wonder if it is legally ok if a fansub team actually would do the job voluntary and give it to sega so they can sell it XD

Oh wow, talk about a death knell. I really liked the first two and was finally thinking of buying the PS3 ones.

Can't wait to hear next week's SBFcast.

Wow man that sucks one disgusting shit from the ass. I guess Sega really pisses in the ass these days.

I guess our only hope for Yakuza 5 lies with Gio Corsi and Adam Boyes, but that's a really long shot, man.

This sucks.

Sega does it again. You bet your ass they looked at the 'Dead Souls' sales and thought: " It doesn't seem that the west likes Yakuza.." Which was the worst one in the entire series.

UGH. I love the Yakuza games, and I don't speak Japanese, so this is incredibly disappointing news for me. Freakin' SEGA, man.

That's really too bad.

Sega pls...

Wonder if Sega would be open to just digital releasing the game with English subtitles. I could never imagine myself saying this but take a page from Capcom with Phoenix Wright Duel Destinies.

Maybe .. maybe they're just tricking us. Right guys? Right...?

On a more serious note. Fuck the Western market. And fuck SEGA America for even thinking of bringing OF THE END over. I knew it would kill the Ryu ga Gotoku series in NA and EU.

SEGA of Japan would have to pass off on it. But many of the Ys games and Trails in the Sky were done by freelancers. Hell, Ys Oath in Felghana was already translated years before and that fan translation was then used for the official release, with some alterations. Just depends on how said company wants to do their localization. In-house, partial freelance or with a company like 8-4.

I didn't expect any future Yakuza game to get released over here, but it's still an incredibly scummy move by Sega.

I'm definitely worried about Persona now too and I've long since giving up hope of PSO2 ever being released.

There is really no need to worry about Persona. Persona does sell in the west Yakuza sadly never did.

@yadilie yeah makes sense

A sad turn of events... But I had very low hopes that Yakuza 5 was getting brought over. Still, it's too bad that Dead Souls is looking to be the last Yakuza game we're left with. Such a colossal pile of junk.

@wintersnowblind: Persona sells buckets. And they've gone to bed with Nintendo with Sonic. That's all they give a shit about now.

Persona and Sonic. Personic.

Goddammit SEGA...

Now 340k is hardly buckets, man. And that's P4, which is the best selling Persona in the west. The others are closer to 200k, like Yakuza - and Yakuza doesn't even require any voice work done, just the translation. That's what makes it baffling, man.

Fuck that.

Yakuza is a boring franchise that no one wants to play outside the hard core western fans which isn't much. SEGA isn't going to publish a game at a loss just so the few fans that Yakuza has in the west are happy. Get over it, Yakuza is dead in NA.

I really doubt the 200K number for Yakuza. These are NPD first week:

Yakuza 3 52k

Yakuza 4 4 26k

Souls: 6k

I hate Sega!

Why can't they just release an all-digital version like the people who translated Way of the Samurai 4? The text translation costs practically nothing and bandwidth costs are pretty small too.

Or they looked at the sales of 3 and 4 and decided it wasn't worth it

Well..... I guess this at least gives me plenty of time to get around to play this sealed copy of Yakuza 4 I got without having to worry about the fifth releasing before I play it....

Well..that's fucked up.

Where did you find that?

I never cared for the Yakuza series myself but this is a bad sign... Maybe when everything is digital and they don't have to cover the manufacturing and distribution in other territories it starts to make more sense to localize games like this even when they don't sell well.

I really wish they can get Atlus USA to bring over Yakuza but at the same time i don't want Atlus USA titles to be delayed or cancelled because of it.

Neogaf XD These are first week NPd numbers and i believe Japanese games are selling a bit better in Europe so It really did not sell that well. I understand the reason for Sega not bringing these games over anymore but it is still sad to see...

Do you have a link? Where did the poster get his/her information? NPD doesn't make those numbers public.

its really disappointing. if the numbers were dreadfully low (which they probably were) I can understand the business behind it. but still KKKKKKKKKKIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYUUUUUUUU KKKKKKKAAAAAAAZZZZZZZUUUUUMMMMAAAAAA!!!!! please come back :D

Yakuza games always looked interesting to me, but they also looked as if they asked the player to forgive too many inadequacies in order to enjoy their quirks. I think Sega's behavior recently suggests that its solution to flagging demand for its core products is to diminish its investments in individual products, thereby making them too flawed for anything more than niche popularity. Just my impression though, I haven't been in the board rooms.

I got it from here:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=688791

He used monthly NPD threads and very often in these threads we get some numbers leaked from there. Sadly I can not access the archive of March NPD 2011 (release month for Yakuza 4) but if you can you are free to do so^^

@veektarius: Has nothing to do with how they treat their IPs. It has everything to do with the Western gaming market. This website is a great testament to that. The West is ignorant. The amount of times I hear something is "too Japanese" is fucking astonishing and disgraceful. But you know. Those people won. We get badly ported re-releases of old Dreamcast games and shitty Sonic games from SEGA. Congrats guys. You won. =)

Yakuza 2: 210k

Yakuza 3: 310k

Yakuza 4: 160k

@grissefar: VGcharz?

And the japanese market is full of people who don't buy western games.... the cultural differences in taste is nothing new, in fact one could argue the Asian markets refusal to ever seemingly embrace anything in the video game market that isn't japanese would make me think that the asian culture is more closed off than the western when it comes to video games.

See I wonder this with more games, for some there is even already a fan-translation. Just hire 2/3 translators and release it digital. You probably need to sell what, a thousand games to get the costs out?

Except they're not similar at all. You can keep saying this and we can turn this into arguing about VGChartz's fake numbers all everyone wants, but it's not the same. The Persona games are much cheaper to make and are localized and published by a company specifically built to handle breaking even on selling 50,000 copies. That's hasn't been Sega for years. They've always wanted Yakuza to be as big in the West as it is in Japan. That it's impossible for a multitude of reasons doesn't matter if it's the expectation they have as a mid-sized publisher who doesn't want to waste their time with smaller projects. And when, in their minds, those resources could be better used on Football Manager or Total War or Relic or things that actually make them money and appeal to far more people than a niche Japanese PlayStation-exclusive franchise and they've tried it five times to no real success, no wonder they're done.

Of course, that doesn't preclude Atlus USA from jumping in.