• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Nagoshi Studios listed as "Permanently Closed"

7 was excellent. And I *loved* 8's gameplay. But the story sucked. Yakuza pirates wasn't anything to write home about either. Nagoshi brought a lot to the table. He could very easily be in charge of one of the spin off series.
Saying 7 and 8's story sucked, specially 7, is a very unpopular opinion

7's story was great. 8's was eh, but not bad imo.

And Pirate Yakuza's story sucked yeah, but it was a "out there" spin off. It's like complaining about Yakuza: Dead Souls story.

RGG7 came out like 2 years before Nagoshi left SEGA.
True, I wasnt aware.

I like Nagoshi, I just think Stranger than Heaven wouldnt exist if he was there, and I love everything they've shown about that game. Has the potential to be the best Yakuza game by far.

Japanese industry seems to worship people in older positions, and everyone under said people become "yes men". I fear that we wouldnt have as much innovation under Nagoshi.

And seems like he didn't go out of Sega in good terms, so a comeback would be surprising. Dude was building a series to go 1-1 against Yakuza.

Don't expect Sega to welcome him with open arms
 
He didn't "left his job", he was kicked in the ass and fired by Sega because he used the company money with no permission to go to dinner (and after-dinner) with other other companies' big shots without telling anyone what the hell he was doing.

He got all the way to the top of Sega's gaming division (he's the reason Sega only made Yakuzas for years) and thought he could get away with anything. And now he has nothing

Yeah but he was just representing the true Yakuza spirit through these actions.

Give the man a break!
 


This comes after the social media channels vanished the other week.

Sad Kazuma Kiryu GIF by Xbox
 
Saying 7 and 8's story sucked, specially 7, is a very unpopular opinion
I certainly didn't say that. I loved 7. That's why I said it was excellent. Period. Full stop. Easily my most replayed yakuza game after 0. I'm so glad it's turn based now. I would also argue the combat is just as fast, if not sometimes faster now because of it; with certain abilities clearing out all the enemies at once, or in 8's case, the quick finish mechanic.
 
Sad news. It would be interesting for someone from the studio to tell how advanced the project actually was and is there a chance of leaking some playable build. Any scenario is possible - the game may have been in pretty advanced stages or a complete mess needing a ton work to stitch everything together.
 
Not surprised. Gangs of Dragoon or whatever looked like a dollar store Yakuza.

Yakuza isn't faring to well without him like, but the last good game RGGS did was Lost Judgement.
 
Perhaps recent Yakuza games have felt lacklustre because all the A team are working on Stranger Than Heaven?
 
Last edited:
I would like to know what happened? Was the game not far enough along?

Leaves RGG
Asks for A LOT of money
Receives it
Shows a mediocre product
Asks for EVEN MORE money
Producer say NO
Closes

What a based yakuza move.

Pretty much this.

I think i remember (but i could be wrong) he got something around 40 million dollars and he needed at least another 40 millions more, to which Tencent said "you know what...".
 
There were rumors that the game need plenty of investments more($50? mlilion) and netease basically said "nah"
How much were the given in the first place? One day someone will spill the beans.

So $80 mill to start from scratch? Seems low.
 
Last edited:
How much were the given in the first place? One day someone will spill the beans.

So $80 mill to start from scratch? Seems low.

Industry is not keen on taking risk at the moment.

Perhaps if he created this project 3-5 years down the road leveraging new AI development tools he could have produced this for a fraction of the cost and would have received the backing from all funders.
 
Last edited:
His game is Yakuza clone
A good game in that series sells for 2mio copies
So it's understandable that Netease said no for extra 40mio
The game was probably mismanaged when it comes to organizing the budget, but it doesn't change the fact that it's hard to make a Yakuza clone from scratch. You don't have the assets, existing mechanics or even entire city maps. Sure larger Yakuza games like 7 or Infinite Wealth created plenty of new content (including a turn-based battle system), but they also still relied on a lot of the existing stuff and that made their development cheaper and faster.
 
The game was probably mismanaged when it comes to organizing the budget, but it doesn't change the fact that it's hard to make a Yakuza clone from scratch. You don't have the assets, existing mechanics or even entire city maps. Sure larger Yakuza games like 7 or Infinite Wealth created plenty of new content (including a turn-based battle system), but they also still relied on a lot of the existing stuff and that made their development cheaper and faster.
It's not really a publisher problem
They asked publisher to give them 80mil to develop a game that would bring back 100m at best - means with marketing and stuff included game bound to end up in red
And Netease (and Tencent too) - for them funding games, especially non-internal studios is a business that follows business rules
 
It's not really a publisher problem
They asked publisher to give them 80mil to develop a game that would bring back 100m at best - means with marketing and stuff included game bound to end up in red
And Netease (and Tencent too) - for them funding games, especially non-internal studios is a business that follows business rules
I know that it's mainly Nagoshi's fault that the project got cancelled and that initial budget calculations were very wrong. Just saying that Yakuza games are doing well because of the experience, tools and content from past games, creating a serious competitor for them would be very difficult, especially in the modern market of games costing a lot of money to make.
 
Top Bottom