Fans of Sega's acclaimed Yakuza series know very well that Sega usually takes their time when localising titles after they have been released in Japan. It can take months, or even years, for some titles to reach Western countries.
We have good news regarding this subject, since the latest Sega Sammy integrated report states that Sega is looking to release upcoming titles simultaneously worldwide. The company is hoping to localise all of their upcoming games during the games' stages of development instead of localising them once the game has already hit Japanese shelves.
"Before a Japanese game is released overseas, it is localized into the language of each country and region. For example, Persona5 has been translated into three languages (English, tradi- tional Chinese, and Hangul). No matter if a game is popular in Japan, it is unlikely to win over fans around the world if the local- ization is insufficient".
This is actually a legitimate concern given that Japanese developers don't always know whether their games will be well-received overseas, alas failing to see that there is a big market for Japanese titles in Western countries. Sega now wants to turn that page and hope to release titles at the same time worldwide.
"The SEGA Group has localization studios that make a huge difference when games are sold overseas. ATLUS became a member of SEGA Group due to the transfer of business in 2013, which has the studio located in California, U.S.A. The studio understands both Japanese and American games very well, and is able to localize Japanese games in a way that accurately conveys the unique world views of Japanese titles to local gamers".
"The studio[Atlus] is able to maximize the entertainment value of localized games that reflect these unique world views, and this has led to very positive reviews from local gamers. During the product development stage, game content is shared with the localization team for translation before the development is finished, facilitating the rapid release of foreign language versions of the game".
Sega's proposal will definitely make more than a few gamers happy, especially since waiting for some titles to be localised can be very tedious; even more so when there is uncertainty regarding any specific title even being considered to be localised outside of Japan. Sega is hoping to simultaneously releasing games around the world as part of one of their objectives of the Road to 2020 road map; which offers a look at their long-term vision, covering fiscal year 2018 through 2020.
Hopefully, we will be getting more, and more titles within the next couple of years; without having to wait an extra few months for that localised version to be ready.
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