The Like a Dragon series is more popular than ever, thanks to the likes of Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Its rise in popularity can be traced back to Yakuza 0 (2015) and Yakuza Kiwami (2016) – a prequel and remake of the PS2 original respectively. Despite just arriving on Switch almost a decade later, Kiwami is reportedly “selling like hotcakes.”
In a recent broadcast hosted by Yakuza/Like a Dragon devs at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (and translated by via DeepL), the current studio director Masayoshi Yokoyama revealed that the recently-released Switch version of 2016’s Yakuza Kiwami – which launched on the 24th of October – has been “selling like hotcakes,” stating:
“First of all, I heard that ‘Kiwami’ is selling like hotcakes. That's good. The executives of the company were predicting the number of units. I missed it by a long shot. I think I looked at it a bit too conservatively. Kato, the marketing manager, guessed it, but it was very exciting.”
Speaking more on his expectations (or lack thereof) for the Switch release, Yokoyama continued, “It was 20 years ago when I made the first Yakuza game. And then it was changed to ‘Kiwami’, but even ‘Kiwami’ had already been released, hadn't it? It's been out for a long time, and I thought it was something that people all over the world had touched, but this time, with the Amazon Prime drama and all the other things that happened, it's on Switch.”
While Amazon’s Yakuza show has been met with some criticism, Yakuza Kiwami remains as excellent as the day it was released, and so it is encouraging to see Switch players picking it up.
KitGuru says: What do you think of the Yakuza show? Have you played Kiwami? Are you on Team Kiwami or 0? Let us know down below.