The winning titles of this year’s Playstation awards have been announced, and certain Sega games have received some distinction for commercial performance or through fan recognition. These awards are based on the performance of games released from the start of November 2014 to the end of October 2015 and covers combined sales throughout Japan and the Asia commercial region.
Phantasy Star Online 2 (PS Vita version) received the Playstation Network Award for being one of the top three highest-selling downloadable titles.
Yakuza 0 received the the Gold Prize for shipping over 500,000 units, and the User Choice Prize for fans polled in the Asia region (Yakuza 0 being one of five recipients for this award.)
It’s worth noting that with receipt of the Gold Prize, Yakuza 0 earned itself recognition alongside some powerful competitors. Here are the other Gold Prize recipients:
- Bloodborne
- God Eater 2: Rage Burst
- One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3
- Grand Theft Auto V
While it’s true that Japan is generally regarded as a hostile environment for conventional “packaged games” (games on dedicated gaming platforms like Playstation 3, Nintendo 3DS, etc.) a number like 500,000 is quite good for a franchise that releases as regularly as the Yakuza franchise does. It also probably shows that Sega’s pivot towards more inclusion and marketing in the Asia region is going to pay off. With a strong Playstation 4 and PC userbase in North American and Europe, hopefully with some proper execution Sega can gain more footing in games in the West. I’m sure many fans can attest to the sentiment that Western Sega presence of its Japanese franchises could be better.
Toshihiro Nagoshi and Masayoshi Yokoyama were present at the event as representatives of the Yakuza franchise, per YakuzaFan. You can check out some nice images of Nagoshi and Yokoyama accepting awards at this DualShockers article.
Credit goes to the above-linked YakuzaFan post for the featured image.