Yakuza 3

[kupomogli]

So...anyone else get this but me?

I got it but a few days prior to getting it gave my dad my LCD and got a Plasma tv 2010 model. Unfortunately it was just yesterday that it finally got to the place Amazon shipped it to and I didn't get home from work until after it closed, meaning I have to wait until Monday to call them then a few more days to get it delivered to my house.

I want to break the tv in first, but I want to play Yakuza. Hopefully the mini map can be turned off.

[exit]

Hopefully the mini map can be turned off.

It can by hitting L3 a few times, which is something I figured out the hard way.

[Aussie2B]

I bought it, but Amazon shipped it only a day or two ago.

The more I learn about the cuts, the more I'm really disgusted about how deceitful Sega has been and what a thoroughly half-assed, rush-job of a localization they did. I mean, they cut out over 15% of the quests for crying out loud, and they turned the red light district into a barren wasteland. And while they made it seem like most of the stuff they were cutting Americans wouldn't "get", most of it was actually present in the previous releases. There was zero reason for any of the cuts besides the quiz. In the end Sega just wanted to cut costs, but of course they're not passing those price cuts along to the consumer at all.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

http://mega64.com/2010/03/09/a-yakuza-3-short-film/

Tanner!! *giggles*

[kupomogli]

Yakuza 3 sold 50,000 the first week. Low numbers, but it's near the amount Yakuza 2 sold its entire lifetime.

Because Yakuza 3 is almost already outselling Yakuza 2. Anyone thinking Sega might localize Yakuza 4? Subtitled only, I don't care, just this time don't cut anything Sega.

[exit]

Sega's Mike Hayes made a statement about Yakuza 3, saying they regret not having released the game earlier, meaning that it's probably doing a lot better than they expected, which is the closest we'll ever get them saying that they were wrong.

Yakuza's huge news on CVG. There's obviously a massive appetite for it out there...
For our fanbase - and it's really big in the United States in particular - we at Sega are disappointed that we didn't introduce Yakuza 3 earlier to market. That was probably an error on our part.

There was a lot of disappointment from Sega fans that we didn't have that on our release schedule last year. What I would say in our defence is that it has approximately 2.5 million Japanese [language] characters to translate in it. It's a huge translation job. That's about a million English characters.

What does this mean? Well for one they'll put up less of a fight on releasing Yakuza 4 here and will probably release it uncut. This also could mean that maybe, just maybe they'll release the cut content as DLC, thus generating sales from all the people that were holding out, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

Here's a link to the full article.

[Aussie2B]

Well, I'm glad they're admitting to something. But of course they're doing the typical PR spin to make it seem like they had reasonable excuses for everything they did, which they certainly did not.

But yeah, if we get Yakuza 4, uncut no less, then that would be terrific. Only problem for me is that there are multiple playable characters in that game, and considering how much I adore Kiryu, I'd rather Y4 be cut than a game than Y3 which stars him fully. But those are just my own silly little concerns.

And if this actually prompts them to offer the cut content as DLC, as much of a sucker as it would make me, I honestly would pay money for that. But if they don't want to make themselves look like complete douches, they'd better make it free.

Who knows, if the sales are better than expected, maybe they'll even decide to bring out Kenzan.

[kupomogli]

I don't really care much for Kenzan. I want to see Yakuza 4 over here. A statement like that seems like we very well may get a release.

[Kitsune Sniper]

The 2.5 million Japanese to 1 million English characters line really sounds... wrong to me for some reason.

[Aussie2B]

It is wrong. Localizations from Japanese to English always INCREASE the number of characters, not decrease. I mean, first you got kanji, which can represent what would be an entire word in English in just one character, and then you got hiragana and katakana which generally represent both a consonant and a vowel in a single character. The average sentence in Japanese is represented in fewer characters than it would be in English.

Although obviously Japanese has far more characters to begin with, so they need to store more than our 26 letters (or 52 with capitals and lowercase). But in the end English takes up more storage space. There have been some cases in the past where part of the reason why a game didn't get a US release is because they would've had to increase the cart size and make it prohibitively expensive.

[kupomogli]

Maybe he said it backwards? Probably meant one million Japanese characters which would have been 2.5 million English characters.

[Kitsune Sniper]

It is wrong. Localizations from Japanese to English always INCREASE the number of characters, not decrease. I mean, first you got kanji, which can represent what would be an entire word in English in just one character, and then you got hiragana and katakana which generally represent both a consonant and a vowel in a single character. The average sentence in Japanese is represented in fewer characters than it would be in English.

Although obviously Japanese has far more characters to begin with, so they need to store more than our 26 letters (or 52 with capitals and lowercase). But in the end English takes up more storage space. There have been some cases in the past where part of the reason why a game didn't get a US release is because they would've had to increase the cart size and make it prohibitively expensive.

I'm more than aware about that. I've been editing Japanese to English game translations for years, and I -am- an English / Spanish translator.

I'm just saying the guy has no idea what he's talking about.

[kupomogli]

Week 2 and we're at 70,000 in the US. Atleast 30,000 more to go in the next month or two is what I'm hoping. The sales already seem good enough that we'll probably receive Yakuza 4 though.

[exit]

Well I think that with the great critical response and decent sales the game received during such a crowded month should bold well for the game. Sega will probably release Yakuza 4 here with little to no fighting involved, especially since it's become a system seller over in Japan, there's really no reason for them to not release it here since Yakuza 3 proves that there's a growing fanbase here now.