It was kind of obvious from the outset, but SEGA's Toshihiro Nagoshi has confirmed for everyone's benefit that the Yakuza series will likely never hit the Xbox 360. And he's taken the time to explain exactly why.
Speaking to Eurogamer about the origins of the urban adventure series - which sees arguably the hardest bastard in games, Kazuma Kiryu, constantly abandon his dreams of giving up the yakuza lifestyle by smacking the crap out of street punks - Nagoshi said that the team had an affinity with Sony that will likely remain for as long as the series lives.
"At the beginning of the project we spoke to all the platform holders including Sony and Microsoft," he explains. "Every platform holder was negative about this prospect, but we kept on pushing because we believed in the potential, and as we kept going one platform holder that showed interest and saw the prospects of this title was Sony."
"That's how we started working with them, and that's probably not going to change."
Nagoshi wouldn't say whether zombie-hunting spinoff Yakuza of the End would signal a true closure of the series, but mentioned that if a Yakuza 5 was on the cards it would be developed very differently to all the ones that preceded it, calling the recent Japanese release "the end of one particular era" of style and mechanics.
Speaking to Eurogamer about the origins of the urban adventure series - which sees arguably the hardest bastard in games, Kazuma Kiryu, constantly abandon his dreams of giving up the yakuza lifestyle by smacking the crap out of street punks - Nagoshi said that the team had an affinity with Sony that will likely remain for as long as the series lives.
"At the beginning of the project we spoke to all the platform holders including Sony and Microsoft," he explains. "Every platform holder was negative about this prospect, but we kept on pushing because we believed in the potential, and as we kept going one platform holder that showed interest and saw the prospects of this title was Sony."
"That's how we started working with them, and that's probably not going to change."
Nagoshi wouldn't say whether zombie-hunting spinoff Yakuza of the End would signal a true closure of the series, but mentioned that if a Yakuza 5 was on the cards it would be developed very differently to all the ones that preceded it, calling the recent Japanese release "the end of one particular era" of style and mechanics.
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