Yakuza
Kazuma Kiryu is an enterprising, well-travelled man who seems to be down to try anything, but for one reason or another, he stubbornly refuses to venture onto the Xbox. Perhaps he just really passionately hates the color green.
Ever since Yakuza premiered on the PlayStation 2 back in 2005, it has steadily risen to become one of SEGA’s golden franchises. The latest entry, The Song of Life, has been a revelation on the PS4, nabbing editor’s choice honors in our review back in March. Alas, it has eluded Microsoft to this point, a shame when it would look so gorgeous on the Xbox One X – a console that is hungering for some AAA titles to flesh out their library.
It isn’t out of the realm of possibility for the franchise to hit other platforms, with the original two titles receiving an unexpected HD remaster on the Wii U a few years back. Digging a little deeper however, it appears as though the blame lies in past mistakes: in a 2011 interview with Eurogamer, Yakuza director Toshihiro Nagoshi stated that, “at the beginning of the project we spoke to all the platform holders including Sony and Microsoft. 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.”
To the victor go the spoils. Hopefully they won’t hold a grudge for much longer, because Xbox fans are itching for the chance to wreak havoc on the streets of Kamurocho.