SEGA's Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio shared a lot of explosive news over the last couple of days, starting with the remake Like a Dragon: Ishin, due in February 2023. Then, yesterday, we learned of Like a Dragon 8 and Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. The proverbial icing on the cake turned out to be the surprise release of spin-offs Judgment and Lost Judgment on PC.
None of these games are planned to launch on the Nintendo Switch console, though. When questioned by Gamespot on this topic, Like a Dragon producer and studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama revealed why.
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?
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. 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.
As reported by IGN, Yokoyama also talked about the Dragon Engine's shortcomings and the research that the developers at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio are doing on Unreal Engine technology.
The Dragon Engine at this point is kind of a bit of an old engine. We have made a lot of minor updates over the years for it, or we've made a lot of minor updates over it, but we haven't made any major updates. So probably next what's coming for would be a major update if we had to do anything.
So, regarding Unreal Engine 5, yes, we are researching it. We are kind of looking at it and saying, what are the merits of each? What's the merit of the Dragon Engine? What's the merit of the Unreal Engine? And when it comes down to it, the Dragon Engine…it's really perfectly designed to represent a city at night. The nighttime city. Whereas Unreal, it's better at showing nature and daytime and that sort of feel.
Like a Dragon: Ishin is being made with Unreal Engine 4. It is presently unclear whether the same applies to the other two games announced yesterday.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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