Yakuza

For most of the early years of the new millennium, Sega was adjusting to life as a third-party developer and publisher. It started by bringing its Dreamcast library to other platforms, and even developed a few new titles, such as Sonic Team’s Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg on GameCube, or revived classic IPs such as Shinobi on PS2 and Panzer Dragoon Orta for Xbox. These were all however one-offs that failed to make a real splash in the market, and having exited the console business after five years of financial losses, Sega still found itself in the red. It needed a hit.

Of course, it wasn’t the only Japanese company struggling at the time. The Noughties saw the rise of Western studios, as developers who were used to developing for PC made the move to more powerful consoles, while tastes shifted towards gritty realism aimed at a more mature audience, and these blockbusters were – or as it’s known in Japan – came to be.