East Meets West – Yakuza 3 Coming In 2010

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m really grateful for this by the way as Yakuza and Yakuza 2 are two of the best games on PS2. But why have you sent Yakuza to die again? PlayStation owners can buy Final Fantasy XIII, Gran Turismo 5(Japan), God of War III, Just Cause 2 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 in March, with Star Ocean International, White Knight Chronicles and Heavy Rain in February. The series need space to breath surely? Sending it to die in March is more or less confirmation not to expect Yakuza 4.

Sega once again gives us the best and the worst …
The best obviously is that Yakuza 3 finally reaches Europe after much uncertainty and almost lost hopes. It’s a very very good news and one of the best PS3 exclusive games from the best Sega, which many people like me love.
The worst is that once again, Sega could do things better. March is a month very hard with the competition of God of War 3 and Final Fantasy XIII and in adition to this, untranslated to local languages like french, deustch and Castilian that is what concerns me.
No, things are not so… if you want to do something and succeed, you must get it right 100%, not half.

Fantastic! I loved the first two, I’ve been waiting with hot anticipation for an announcement like this and finally it’s here.

I seriously can’t wait to play this game after playing the demo of the Japanese version and getting a taster of what it’s like.

Will the game include all the DLC that came with the game in Japan, either on the disc or through updates? I think there were 30 updates over the first 30 days which were only things like extra items but it’d be nice to get those too.

omg i love you, this just made my day. my ps3 got the yellow light but i’m going to make sure i have a ps3 ready by march 2010 just so i can play yakuza 3!

Thank you Sega this is exactly what everyone was asking for, I hope you receive the great sales you deserve for offering such original products (in a sea of first person shooters) and with some dedicated fan help like with Valkyria chronicles you will.

With Shenmue gone Yakuza is the only thing even remotely similar, I hope it’s a huge success for you.

Question: Are there any plans to bring Yakuza kenzen over to the west as well? (now I’m being greedy lol)

im so psyched about this. been waiting for Yakuza to hit PS3. Hopefully if you listerning Sega europe make sure you release Yakuza 4 the same time as japan and i’ll luv you forever.

One quick query will europe ever see demon souls ?

gud news that, but i heard the east is getting yakuza 4 at around the same time the west gets yakuze 3, any truth to that?

Thank you Sega for the great news. I hope we get Yakuza 4 some time soon.

Great news about Yakuza 3 but please could you have a word with Sonic Team/AM2/Sega for a new Shenmue & Phantasy Star Online & Otogi.
Thank you Martin for all the information you’ve already posted.
(fingers crossed for updates of those three games)

OMG !!! This news is so great!!! But why tok it so long?!? Well, late is better then not at all. Thanks SEGA and Sony to getting this game over to us at west. Can’t wait to go Nico Belic with my fists and matrial arts.

@ Dante_Zero : Yes and no. I bought my Demon’s Souls like a inported game. Some retailers have inported games, you have just to search around.

What is wrong with Sega?

In europe are 4 another Mainlanguages. The people in france, spain, germany and italy dont speak native english. We want subtitles in our languages! And we want dual voice overs. French/Japanese, Spanish/Japanese, German/Japanese and Italian/Japanese. No one her in Austria speak japanese and gamers here dont want to read subtitles. We want to see the graphic and details in cutszenes. We dont want to read subtitels in cutszenes.

What is the problem? Why Sega hates us so much?

This is fantastic news.

I got Yakuza 1 & 2 a few months ago and I’ve played them quite slowly what with other games out. I’m at Chapter 11 on Yakuza 1 so far and started playing when I heard the news.

I have a few questions

1. Is anything going to be taken out the original Y3 for the western releases? For example certain mini-games or dialogue that western players might not understand or they can’t get past the censors.
2. In comparison to the first 2 games, what does this game add or improve?
3. Will the trophies for the western port be the same as the Japanese trophies or will they be a different set? What are the trophies for this game anyway?
4. Any news about Yakuza 4 heading this way?

I heard a rumour that the hostess club part of the game would be cut in order to make the localisation process easier, is this true?

Buying it day 1 either way but was just wondering about that.

will shenmue ever make a return ???¿¿¿¿

It’s great that it’s Japanese VA with English subs.
Any chance of having other languages available for subtitles?

@Kevin Eva / SEGA
If your are “dealing with our classic franchises” I have some hints:

Many would wish re-releases of classic Model 1/2/3 and NAOMI arcade games!
And you know about Virtua fighter 5 R …

Let the Japanese hear our words .

@JohannesPaul
SEGA doesn’t hate you. We should be happy that this niche game is released outside of Japan. Voice and text for other languages would be too costly.

This is brilliant news!! => =>

Great news!! Will there be any changes between the Japanese and the Western versions?

this is by far the best news of the year!

question: why did you choose the March release window? It seems quite contested with God of War, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy, Battlefield and so on. Yakuza 3 might not success with all these other Must Buy titles too.

looks pretty good

bah! i don’t want japanese VO i will spend more time reading the subtitles instead of enjoying the game, i hate that! sega won’t be getting my cash this time around, yakuza 1&2 had english voices, why not this one? it seems like complete laziness to me they rush it to release the game by march 2010, i would be more than happy to wait longer for them to give us english voice actors.

Great news. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Yakuza series, and I’ll look forward to playing it. It’s a shame you decided to pick a March release, since there’s about 4 other great titles coming out that month, but I’ll try my best to squeeze it in.

Sugoi! Subarashi!!
This is truly outstanding news!!!
Big ups to the European Sega community for passing on the enthusiasm of all of us outside Japan hoping to see this title officially released.
Likewise, extra large and in charge, mad props to both Sega Europe and SOE for following through.
For tastefully adding subtitles yet keeping the Japanese dialogue intact.
And I pray the content remains true to that of the Japanese release, but rated accordingly.
Domo arigato gozimasu!!!!

I hope to appease the fans outside Japan, and to introduce it to the PSN community at large outside Japan.
That the Yakuza 3 Final Gameplay Digest 1 trailer is released throughout the PSN Store’s reach, in all 6 minutes and 35 seconds of its epic 1080p glory.
With subtitles of course.
Yakuza 3… Preorder Are Us!!!!!

Finally, a question to AAUK: Once Yakuza 3 is officially released outside Japan, can we look forward to the release of Shenmue on PS3 as well?

ANOTHER game out in March! seriously guys, check the schedual.

[DELETED], this is now starting to take the [DELETED]…

would it be cynical to suggest it’s only coming out in the West because it’s ONLY sold half a million copies in the East and they need to make some cashback somehow?

Hell yeah!!! Finally SEGA is coming to its senses!

I have one question for the creators (although I know they won’t answer it) – where the heck is Shenmue 3? I know SEGA is now run by Yakuza itself and they prefer to make a Yakuza game every year but come one, give Yu Suzuki some love and let him finish Shenmue, especially since he could use Yakuza engine.

At last the game will be available in Europe (and US)!!!! Awesome news! I have some questions:

1)As far as I know the game has real actors in the game. How hard was to work on their 3D models?

2) It will have trophies?

3)Why do you decide to release it on March 2010 since there are many other games that will be released that month? Final Fantasy XIII, God of War 3, Gran Turismo 5, to name a few. I think its a bad release date for Yakuza 3, because many people will choose the other highly anticipated games instead of this, and after the low sales SEGA will decide to stop releasing the Yakuza games in Europe. And that will be a blast for us, the Yakuza series fans….

Thanks in advance for the answers, and as for me, I will pre-order the game Keep it up!!!!

OMG Thank you SO MUCH Kevin for this fab news, i’m so excited!!
I was wondering if I should import it from Japan or not. This makes me so happy!!!
Thanks Sega, thank you thank you developers!
Sure I’ll buy it as soon as it is released.

@HUYI:

Yakuza 2 did not have English voiceovers in it, and the English dub in the first Yakuza game was terrible (terribly acted and the game lost most of it’s feel as a Japanese Yakuza story). I’m very happy they’re not attempting a horribly cheap rushed dub this time around.

Great news, but when will we get Yakuza Kenzan?

@racedriving

Customers satisfaction is to expensive for a big publisher like sega?

My school english is absolutely useless for the most games.
The most people dont understand pun or the many different slangs and accents.
And not much people visit a advanced training to improve their english skills to understand 100% at games.

I want to easy follow the stroy. In cutszenes/gameplay with fast dialogs i dont have the time to read the subtitles and at a simple cost-benefit calculation between subtitles and dubs are the subtitels the loosers.

I’am not a native english speaker which means i must translate all the sub/dub in my head and that many different slangs and accent make it much harder. Yes, i am to lazy to read all the time subtitles.
Who watched Trainspotting in the original dub and is no native english speaker knows what i mean.
A Game lives from density, from the concentration at the actually happening, from to plunge into the story, from the indentification with the charakters. If they speak the same language as my, than it helps much more.

Full translation at all 5 european languages for Yakuza 3!

Yeah english dubbing is horrible and it should be against the law. you dont need to understand japanese, but it is so much more authentic and keeps you in the right mood.

reading through subtitles is not so horrible, and concidering that the game has million gazillion lines of text and voicework its just not financially worth dubbing. European version of Yakuza 2 didnt have dubbing, and it was GLORIOUS! i cried (manly) at the elevator-scene in the end of it!

People who cant read english text are a real minority. I mean a minority in an already niche title Miniscule!

So… Sega wants to release Yakuza 3 in Europe, in March ( GOW3, FFXIII,… ) without translation to, at least, multi-5 language. Ok Sega, do it, but then don’t say that Yakuza doesn’t matter in Europe. I say the same for Valkyria Chronicles, how much could it cost to develop a patch to translate (subs) it to multi-5?. Of course VC2 will be released only in English. Sega have a good games, and a good franchise, but his publisher policy is really bad. I ask myself if SCEE can make something, for example, develop a multi-5 language patch for those games that can have a lot of fans across Europe.

YAY! I’m looking forward to this. It looks like a great game!

Excellent news really enjoyed the original but never forgive you for not releasing the sequel over here was really disappointed. Nice to hear that this is getting a release though and with Japanese VA.

JohannesPaul: What you fail to see, is that this is, as racedriving wrote, a “niche” game. That is, it has very limited appeal outside of Japan. If you had followed what the fans of the series have written about a possible localization of the game, many of those who are potential customers do not care about English voices, and many, like myself, would actually not even use the English ones, if they were available.

Recording all voices again, and redoing all cutscenes to match the new speech, is not cheap, and TBH given the target audience for this game, I doubt it would be worth the time and money required to release with English voices (let alone five languages, as you insanely suggest).

Awesome, but any news on the kenzan game? I would love to see it hit the west as well… until then though, wohoo!

Yakuza is only a niche game because sega want it so.

There was never any form of promotion or commercial-free here in austria, switzerland and germany. How did the hole market get the information of existence of this games?
Why is Ryo Ga Gotoku a good selling game in japan? Because the very good promotion inclusiv commercials with the high budget japanese voice actors.
I dont want english dubs in the version for austria. I hate english dubs too. But i dont understand japanese.

Fantastic news! I loved the Japanese demo. March is shaping up to be an unbelievable month.

thatz soo gay, the 2 last titels wasn’t tht awesome… to be honest, the game is just booring at all!

great news!!! for my d1 hoping for yakuza 4 in the west too!!
QUESTION FOR THE DEV:
all the game for ps3 are region free… and so why don t you do the original version with the english subs already? if you do like that i can buy an import jap copy… and don t have to wait a year to play a game, if i m luck, because if the game don t sell we have no hope to see in europe…that would be a great solutions for me.

Fantastic news, but why has it taken so long?
Yakuza 2 I speculate didn’t sell well because they released it at the end of the PS2′s life, and like other comments the third is being released into Spring’s biggest hitters. Nice move Sega. They really don’t want the series to do well in the west. Any idea when (Sega) will release Kenzan? (The other one in the series). I suppose ‘old’ Japan doesn’t appeal to Sega Europe’s marketing team? Especially when then can make a new crap Sonic game.

Awesome, Yakuza 2 kicked-ass.

Fantastic news I have been dying to play this….. Nice birthday present for myself

To those mentioning GT5 – the March date is for Japan only. Prologue was released in Europe 3 months after Japan, and 4 months after in the US. Yakuza would still have to go up against FF and GoW but I think most people don’t just limit themselves to one game a month, and the only game that could come out in March that I’d pick to play over this is Trico but that’s not going to happen.

very cool. i’ll have to add this to my list.

I hope it won’t end up like the invisible Valkyria Chronichles on shelf two weeks after release, or how a game that has no visibility can sell?

Sure buy for me though (just hope I won’t have to visit 4 store to find what seems to be the only copy ever released)