Yakuza producer hints at rest of series coming to PC
Please, Ian Sega!
Sega this week announced western releases for another three Yakuza games, another three stories of kind-hearted mobsters helping everyone offering fatherly advice to children and adults alike and smashing thugs with bicycles. Yakuza 3, 4, 5 are the latest coming our way and... well, Sega haven't actually confirmed PC releases yet. Seeing as the series grew on PlayStation, it's starting there. But asked this week whether the rest of the series is coming to PC too, Sega's Yakuzoids avoided giving a straight answer and I'm totally reading that as "Shhh! The PR people won't let us talk about it yet." Please, Ian Sega, hop to.
On Tuesday Sega both announced The Yakuza Remastered Collection and launched the first part of it, a revamped version of 2009's Yakuza 3. Yakuza 4 will follow in October then 5 in February. Along with higher resolutions and framerates, they have revised translations and add back some bits cut from the original western releases.
That will bring western PlayStations up to date with the series. We're still way behind on PC. We only have Yakuza Kiwama and Kiwami 2 (remakes of the first two games) and the prequel Yakuza 0. That Sega continued to Kiwami 2 after testing the waters with the first two suggests they want the rest on PC. I want the rest on PC too. And Yakuza producer Daisuke Sato sure seems to be hinting we should expect it.
VG247 say Daisuke Sato laughed when they asked him about the possibility of a PC release during a Gamescom interview.
"I can't comment on that at this very moment," he replied, "...but I wouldn't say it won't ever happen."
Right right, so you're saying it will. And then 2018's Yakuza 6 will cap the series off. Then Judgment, the new spin-off, will follow, right? Judgment I'm less confident about, but Sega do seem quite committed to PC so I do fully expect to see the core Yakuza games (probably not the spin-off Dead Souls) come our way. When the numbers men permit it.
Frankly, I'm quite glad that they're not rushing onto PC immediately. As much as I adore the open-world brawl-o-RPG series, I am still catching up after Sega released three of these huge games on PC in just over seven months. That's a whole lot of wrestledadding.
For more on Yakuza's wonders, see our reviews of Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2.
