The revered Yakuza franchise is about to undergo a huge change, far as its Western audiences are concerned, because Sega has just announced that it's going to sunset the title in lieu of a different one. Specifically, future "Yakuza" games will instead be titled "Like a Dragon," which is a far cry from what many fans will be used to, but as the publisher has explained, it's not without its reasoning.
While Yakuza has become a household name for this franchise in the west, the same cannot be said for it in Japan, where its entries had always been known as Ryu ga Gotoku, which translates to "like a dragon." In fact, the developer of Yakuza games, RGG Studio, is named after this very same phrase, and Sega now claims that the time is right for the franchise to do away with its Westernized title variant, so that its marketing could "more closely align" with the original.
A Sega representative recently went on record saying that they could confirm that the series will be known as Like a Dragon moving forward, which has since been echoed by Scott Strichart, Sega's localization producer. This piece of news comes just after the announcement of Yakuza 8, which is still generally referred to as a "Yakuza" game by the community. While the title change has been hinted at since the launch of Yakuza: Like a Dragon - which was effectively just Yakuza 7 - it's almost certain that it will take a good long while before everyone stops using the franchise's old name.
This change is effective immediately, as was shown during the announcement of a number of upcoming Like a Dragon games. Like a Dragon: Ishin's launch in the west, for example, is going to be the first new franchise entry to forego the Yakuza moniker entirely, and the fans will need to keep up with it. While the whole thing may seem like an unnecessary complication, Sega's intent on standardizing the series' titling may end up being a good thing in the long run.
Curiously, Capcom may have attempted to do something similar with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard's 2017 release, though the publisher seems to have backtracked that decision later on. In this case, Biohazard is the franchise's Japanese title, but it's far more immediately recognizable to Western audiences as it doesn't need to be translated, whereas Yakuza's new Like a Dragon title is, indeed, a translation.
It is, of course, worth pointing out that the Yakuza series' title change shouldn't affect the games' content in a meaningful way. Sega is simply attempting to simplify its marketing and unify the two disparate regions into one simply to align more closely with one another. Like a Dragon's awesome minigames, heartfelt stories, and everything else that makes this franchise its own thing should remain the same.
Source: Digital Trends