Like A Dragon Producer Is Hesistant To Bring Yakuza Games To Nintendo Switch

Yakuza games used to be PlayStation exclusives, but over the last couple of years, the series has landed on other platforms. Just about every game in the mainline series can be found on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, but don’t expect to see Kiryu Kazuma busting heads on the Nintendo Switch.

Though Nintendo’s hybrid video game console could technically run the Yakuza games on its hardware–or even stream them in a manner similar to recent Resident Evil games–executive producer and Ryu Ga Gotoku studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama is hesitant, for now, to port the adult series to that system.

“Do we want to put a title like this where we’re going around and picking a fight with the world and doing all this Yakuza stuff, on a Switch,” Yokoyama explained. According to the producer, the family-friendly image of the Switch in its home ground of Japan clashes with the “underground feeling” that Yakuza games project.

“We still kind of think of ourselves as people of the night world, right? We don’t want to be like walking around the day with everybody else,” Yokoyama said. “Like for us, it’s kind of showing this kind of underground feeling. I think the underground kind of feeling is what we want to do.”

Yakuza fans will have plenty of underground action to look forward to soon. Next year will see a remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin and the Yakuza spin-off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name arrive on PC and console, while Like a Dragon 8 is scheduled to launch in 2024. For the next mainline entry in the series, RGG Studio is pairing up both Ichiban Kasuga and Kiryu Kazuma for a new adventure in what it calls “the largest [Yakuza] game to date” in the long-running series.