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Evening Reading: Yakuza 3's Pyrrhic Victory

by Garnett Lee, Dec 08, 2009 6:34pm PST

After looking for the longest time like it'd see a release outside of Japan, Yakuza 3 finally got confirmed for a full Western release. Directly citing the "months upon months of requests, a myriad of rumors, and even full campaigns that speak to the unparalleled dedication of the fans" Sega's Aaron Webber made the announcement on the PlayStation Blog. Webber even went a step further offering fans a chance to post questions in the comments for the dev team back in Japan.

Now for the bad news. Somehow, despite their displeasure with sales for the prior two installments of Yakuza and the long time since the release of this game in Japan (it came out there all the way back in Feb.), Sega set the North American release for March 2010. Yes, the same March that sees both God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13 release. Now granted, not everyone who would pick up Yakuza also wants the other two but seriously, I don't think I'm out on a limb saying that you're basically asking PS3 gamers to bump their payout for games that month up to $180 to include Yakuza 3.

Folks, that's not happening. I've been a vocal supporter of the series and for the life of me I can't figure out Sega's approach to handling it. The second game suffered a similarly long delay in its journey west releasing in Dec of 2006 to Japan and not making it to America until Sep of 2008 -- almost two years later. By that time the next generation of consoles had taken firm hold leaving a high production value game like Yakuza 2 out of place on the PS2.

I guess their thinking goes that the fans are the only ones really interested and they'll buy it anyway -- which we definitely should. The decision to keep the Japanese language voiceovers and subtitle also points to that explanation. But fans or otherwise it sure would have helped for there to be some consideration of the rest of the release schedule. Of course this is the same Sega that delayed the North American release of Bayonetta until just after the holidays.

No delays for us today. There's plenty of news to go around:

It's not nearly long enough to take in all the bad signs you see in a year but these 50 best protest signs of the year are a good sampling.

Remember Andy, Alex's cute little brother on Family Ties? Well, he might be looking for Gary Coleman's digits to make a Cash Call after getting arrested for assault. That tattoo is really working for the look.

Things have gone completely wacky in Copenhagen for the Climate Summit where they non-ironically have a limo shortage and, "the local sex workers' union -- they have unions here -- has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning."

And if you think your neighbors have weird pets, at least they don't have a baby honey bear, a leopard cat and a slow loris primate.


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