Fans have been waiting for a Yakuza 8 release date since it was announced to be in development in October 2021. However, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio has kept mum about further details on the game. In fact, all we’ve seen of it so far is a brief clip of a cutscene from a Japanese YouTuber’s tour of the studio. So, when can we expect to see the next Yakuza game?
Yakuza 8 release date predictions
Neither Sega nor Ryu ga Gotoku Studio has announced a Yakuza 8 release date. No leaks or rumors have emerged to hint at when we can expect it either. So, we’ll have to look at the development of the previous game in the series to form an estimate.
Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon was first announced in August 2017. However, we can assume that development started on it shortly after the release of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life in Japan on December 8, 2016. Yakuza 7 was released in January 2020 in Japan, which means it took roughly three years of development. Given that Judgement was developed and released concurrently, we can assume that the studio’s work on Lost Judgment didn’t affect the release of Like a Dragon. So, our rough estimate for the earliest potential Yakuza 8 release date is January 2023 for Japan.
However, bad news came along with the announcement that Yakuza 8 is in development. Yakuza’s creator Toshihiro Nagoshi and longtime director and producer Daisuke Sato departed Ryu ga Gotoku Studio in late 2021. Masayoshi Yokoyama, who’s been with the series since the beginning, took over as studio head. Still, the departure of key personnel could cause the game to take longer than the previous entry to develop. Alternatively, Sega might be going for a worldwide launch for this entry, in which case we’d revise our earliest release date estimate to November 2023.
