Yakuza "surprise announcement" coming next week

Sega has promised a "surprise announcement" related to the Yakuza series next week.

Drawing on Japanese sources, Gematsu reports the announcement will be made sometime after 5:00PM Tokyo Time on August 18.

The announce will come during an event at which Sega will announce the results of a character poll.

There's no indication of what the announce may refer to, but it's hard not to speculate that the PlayStation exclusive series will make the jump to PS4 sooner rather than later.

The latest game in the Yakuza series, Yakuza 5, released in Japan in December but has not yet been confirmed for Western release; historically, there have been lengthy delays in getting the games west, and then only in limited release quantities.

The most recent western release was Yakuza: Dead Souls, a non-canonical spin-off of Yakuza 4 called Yakuza: of The End in Japan.

The Yakuza series was created by Toshihiro Nagoshi, who also made Binary Domain. In 2011, Sega renamed the team behind both games in honour of the Yakuza series, one of the few console bets it has refused to ease up on.