Yakuza has gone from cult status to helping sell next-generation video game consoles, and kept its identityThe Yakuza series has come a long way since 2005, when Sega figured the best way to get people interested outside of Japan was to enlist the voice acting talents of high-profile Hollywood talent like Michael Madsen, Eliza Dushku, and Mark Hamill. Despite a huge marketing push, Yakuza flopped.

It remained enormously popular in Japan, however.

In the last few years though, starting with 2017’s Yakuza 0, the series has left its niche behind. It’s to the point that the game’s latest release, the RPG-influenced Yakuza: Like a Dragon, has been heavily promoted as one of the launch games for the new Xbox machine. Suddenly, Yakuza is being used to help sell consoles.

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