Nagoshi Studio Set Up by NetEase, Yakuza Creator Leads

Be interesting to see what comes of this. Clearly it will be something we don't expect, because otherwise, as he says, why leave SEGA. Look forward to learning more

Keiichiro Toyamas Studio is also financially supported by Netease btw

I'm expecting nothing but mobage F2P P2W garbage. Prove me wrong Nagoshi.

I hope it works out for him and the folks that remained at RGG. Very much looking forward to Yakuza 8 whenever it's revealed.

Sucks that the top dogs all went with him, but it's kind of expected.

Does this mean that China now control them, or 'aquired' them? What does that mean for us console gamers?

I really don't like acquisitions and the way things have been going the last couple of years it's turning into a 'who has the most money' industry.

However what I do like to see is the creation of new independent studios. Sometimes that works out well. Like when the employees or RARE left Microsoft to create PlayTonic Games. I loved Yooka-Laylee and was even a Kickstarter backer for it.

First game they make will take place in Komurocho.

I worry the glory days of Yakuza and RGG are behind us with the team broken up like this. They must have either paid them off well, or Sega was grinding them on Yakuza long after they wanted to stop.

Then again, how many times have we heard about creatives that wanted to break from the shackles of corporate demands and run the business their "own" way who end up over-budget, under-performing, and late? A bunch of artists saying "we want to run the business without the accounting overloads" seldom ends well. Artists are great at spending money...not so great and managing it.

@GADG3Tx87 NetEase basically bribed them away from Sega with the promise of forming a new studio. They likely wouldn't have left if money and promises hadn't been offered, but they may have been shopping (like Monolith's founders was with FF) for a sugar daddy if they weren't happy with endless sequels for Sega. But it's become a recurring thing for Chinese big money to fund Japanese "celebrity" devs to start new studios for them.

$20 says they're making mobile and PC games now.

@NEStalgia
Well that sucks. I mean as the example I gave earlier sometimes it works out when a new studio is formed. The talent is in the people, not the name. But acquisitions are becoming far more common place and I mostly blame the rise of mobile games for it. Since they became popular everyone thinks they can make quick mobile crap with MTX in them for huge money from compulsive spenders. How many 'run' games do we need?

As for Yakuza I was worried I wouldn't like LAD for the changes to the formula but I actually really enjoyed it. It felt 'fresh' and the story was great. I thought I wouldn't like the move away from Kiryu but Ichiban was a very likable character and I liked the new combat system, very Persona-esque.

I got the platinum on it a couple of days ago making that my 104th. Now I've got the platinum on the whole series, was really chuffed with that.

@GADG3Tx87 Yeah, the rise of mobile and it's sales model's bleed effect into traditional gaming has had exactly zero positive benefit in the world... And a lot of these investment companies, particularly from China and S. Korea seem to have interest in acquiring famous Japanese studios or developers mostly to put them on that mobile machine. The devs get that "freedom" to make something unique or creative and are more than willing to sell their soul to some mtx mobile machine, and get freedom from a stuffy corporate atmosphere, but the tradeoff is making what amounts to gambling machines. It's too common these days.

NetEase does ONLY mobile and PC mtx games, aimed primarily at the Asia markets, and the cheapest kind of junk, at that. Either they're planning on debuting in the console space, or they just took Sega's best to make some mobile junk. Not sure what Nagoshi was thinking, but I'm sure it had a lot of zeroes (and he must have really hated his management.)

The only decent thing NetEase does is distribute Blizzard stuff and Minecraft in China. How could RGG hollow out to them?

Yeah, I really did like what I've played so far (not done it yet, actually) of LAD. Though Nagoshi was still involved in it, so, I still don't know how that affects its future, or Judgement (though that might have been on thin ice already.) It helps to be a DQ fan when playing LAD though

@NEStalgia
You know I've never actually played a Dragon Quest game and there's a friend of mine who keeps badgering me to try. I'll probably give one a go when my backlog gets smaller. It seems never ending though as I'm a trophy whore and it keeps me playing them for ages lol.

I have the same stance with him though having never played a Metal Gear Solid game.

I also liked the story of Judgement but the game felt like its development had been rushed a bit.
I love Sega games and while the Dreamcast didn't do well there has been a part of me that, maybe out of nostalgia, wished they would try again with a platform of their own.

I'm currently playing the Mass Effect LE and after that I'll be finally moving on to Catherine Full Body. Which I bought day one and it's still sealed. This backlog will get smaller eventually. I've got about another 25 games to go. 😆

How far into LAD are you?

They'll reinvent themselves with the brand new franchise "Triad"! If it's anything like Yakuza and sleeping dogs I wouldn't complain.

@GADG3Tx87 DQ is really special, but it can also be very simplistic. The simplicity is it's charm for fans, but it can bore some people. I happen to be a big fan, but I can see where some might be underwhelmed. DQ11, though, just has so much charm bursting from it that it's impossible not to love it. I actually didn't finish it yet either...when I really like games I tend to not want them to ever end in my mind so I leave them near the end. I "never finished" Tales of Vesperia for that reason. I left it right before the last boss. But DQ11, I got to near what I thought was the end and left it there, and then found out from a conversation here or PXB that there's two entire acts remaining after that point! So I have a lot of DQ11 left to play apparently That's a big game, and, yeah, I imagine trophy hunting would be a monumental task given its size. Old DQ, has its own charm. I still can't believe the old DQ games haven't been remastered for modern consoles yet. The gameplay may be repetitive after decades of the same menu items, but when games like DQVII have a script so massive it overflows 2 bookshelves at S-E HQ, that really deserves new life beyond a 3DS port. I worry about the "more adult" next DQ game with new staff. A bit part of the appeal has been it's almost the last "classic" JRPG still running in the modern world, and it's a fairy tale come to life. Making it "mature" feels like it would do to DQ what making a Yakuza game in a cartoon art style would do to it.

The fanboy in me would love to see a new Sega console, even if I know there's a greater chance of Mario on PlayStation than that happening... Heck, Sega's PC-first these days, who'd have guessed that when the Saturn was out? They've been leaning on RGG pretty hard, though. Them losing top talent like this makes me wonder if a dark period for Sega is ahead again. Hopefully RGG is solid enough without these guys by now.

I couldn't get into Catherine for some reason. I loved Q-Bert back in the day, but somehow the Q-Bert type gameplay wasn't clicking for me in Catherine, and I didn't particularly like any of the "Catherines" enough to motivate me to power through gameplay I wasn't into for story. People that love it love it though!

I think I'm still in the first third of LAD actually. I actually wasn't done with the classic Yakuza games yet, but I got it as my launch title for the XSX, which I then interrupted a week later when I got my PS5 and switched to Miles and others. And then switched back to it for a bit, but then switched to Fenyx Rising which captivated me last year. And then when I went to go back to yakuza decided I should complete all the classic games first. Which may have been a mistake because, originally I was going in order, but then decided since I hadn't done 0 yet, I might as well jump into that one. 120 hours later, I'm still doing the cabaret club story, lol.... The economy games take too much time, but there's too much story (and upgrades) tied to them to skip.

@tameshiyaku Until the chapter with the economy minigame, and you have to use real money for your imaginary business...

@NEStalgia
I'd definitely support and buy a Sega console if they ever released a new one. It's certain to never happen though. Then again who would have thought we'd ever see Sonic on a Nintendo platform after the early 90's?

I certainly hope it doesn't end up a dark period for them, I wouldn't like to see them get bought out, would much rather they remain independent.

Yakuza 0 was amazing and out of the Kiryu Saga that was my favourite. The cabaret clubs in Kiwami 2 were bigger and really fun running them. I loved the story in Yakuza 6 too.In LAD you get a holdings business later in the game and when you finally complete it you can replay it over and over to net you 3million yen about every 5 minutes, a good way to get some quick cash.

terrified at the thought of nagoshi putting all his faith on a company that will be impacted by the CCP in one way or another. he left a very good thing at sega and it might be too idealistic to think netease will be the perfect publisher and stay true to its word. netease is also publically held, has its shareholders and profit expections afterall. one poorly received game and it could be the end of this venture. very concerned indeed.

@GADG3Tx87 For nostalgia's sake a new Sega console would be super cool. Even if it happened it would crash and burn, though. Not enough of us old folks that remember Sega consoles as a great thing, and even then there weren't enough of us, obviously... Plus all the hardware people left, long ago... Since the future of gaming is obviously moving more and more towards cloud services, and Sega's more or less already in the PC/cloud services business with their arcade business, they're probably better positioned for the "future" then they were in the past. I could see a Sega cloud service of some sort as a "platform" existing someday. I know they have that cloud platform for arcades they introduced in the past year or two, that basically lets machines 'time share" games remotely. Ironically of Sony sticks with being tied to hardware and the future moves more cloud, Sega could end up in a better position than Sony as a "platform"....that would be weird, but also kind of satisfying to watch.... slow, samurai justice....

The Yakuza series can get samey, but....it's such a good and varied set of content, even samey tends to remain fun no matter how much you play. I did NOT expect to be playing 0 for 120 hours and I'm still only 2/3 through, though!