2016 marked the end of the adventures of beloved Yakuza protagonist Kazuma Kiryu in Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, and the series' developers are looking towards the future, as they mentioned in 4Gamer's traditional year end mass interview.

Producer Toshihiro Nagoshi made an interesting mention on wanting to announce something different.

This year we released Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, and we were able to welcome a milestone for the Yakuza series. I feel that there are pros and cons for the end of the story of Kazuma Kiryu, who has served as the series' protagonist for over ten years.

Nonetheless, I will continue to create content that can be enjoyed by me as well as my staff. I also think this is a sign of gratitude towards Kazuma Kiryu himself. In the meanwhile, I also want to announce something different. Please look forward to it.

Producer Masayoshi Yokoyama also weighed in, mentioning that 2016 felt like the longest year of the series, since they released Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 6 close to each other, then continuing to talk about the future of the series.

Now that we have completed the final chapter of the legend of Kazuma Kiryu, I think 2017 will be the year in which we'll make the first step towards the "future." I'm thinking about how we could provide a new way to enjoy Yakuza, connecting what we have done up to now and the future.

Personally, I can think of at least ten ways to continue the series in completely different directions, but we'll all have to stand-by and see what they'll announce. Big Yakuza-related announcements normally come in the Summer, so I expect that we'll hear something by then.

In the meanwhile, I better stop writing, because most of you guys haven't played Yakuza 6, and will have  to wait until early 2018 to get a taste of the game. Luckily, we’ll get Yakuza 0 on January January 24th, 2017, and Yakuza Kiwami (the full remake of the original Yakuza) next summer.

If you want to see what the game looks like, you can check out the first 80 minutes, and 80 more featuring fighting, dining, exploring kamurocho and minigames.

We also have a video of the included port of Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, and two videos of the sexy but hilarious “live chat” minigame.