How the Switch version of Yakuza Kiwami came to be

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio director Masayoshi Yokoyama has shared interesting details about how the recent Switch version of Yakuza Kiwami became to be.

It turns out that the project initially started as an experiment. Yokoyama was personally interested in Switch, especially after wrapping up work on the latest Super Monkey Ball game. Since the Yakuza team didn’t have much experience with the console, a small team began researching what was possible. Kiwami was chosen for the test and even though Yokoyama was pleased with the results, there were no plans to move forward with a proper release initially. However, there was another push due to the series’ new TV series.

Here’s our full translation of Yokoyama’s comments made on social media:

It must have been around spring. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble was in its final stages of development and I was playtesting it at my desk. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii had already started development, and in between working on that, I thought to myself that playing on Switch was just so easy and convenient.

If you think about it, the Yakuza team’s programmers had had no real contact with the development environment involved with the Switch, and only had a basic understanding of the specs and capabilities of the console. It may have been a little late, but with the Yakuza engine team leader at the center, the programmers began some basic research into the Switch.

For the research we chose Yakuza Kiwami. Compared to the most recent titles it was a smaller game, but still had all the fundamentals of the Yakuza series, so we thought it would be good for confirming the technical capabilities.

It was about a month later that I saw Yakuza Kiwami working on Switch. It looked much more beautiful than I had imagined, and when I first saw it I was actually moved. However, this was simply a by-product of the programmer’s research, and at that time there was no discussion of actually turning it into a product.

I thought to myself, “It would be such a waste to not release this to the world when it was running so well,” and just then there was a discussion along the lines of “We want something to tie-in to the Like a Dragon: Yakuza TV series”. “Hahaha, well we have something just like that, Kiwami on Switch…”

And then the rest happened in the blink of an eye.

Yokoyama recently indicated that Yakuza Kiwami is selling very well on Switch despite being out for only a few days. Currently it is towards the top of the digital eShop charts.

Translation provided by Simon Griffin, Philip Proctor, and SatsumaFS on behalf of Nintendo Everything.