UPDATE: The archive of the stream can be viewed here.
Sega of America held a Yakuza 5 live stream today, where Sega PR Representative John Hardin and Localization Producer Sam Mullen showed a bit of what the game has to offer. Playing as Kiryu and Shinada, they showed the game’s combat, visited a hostess club, participated in karaoke, drove people around in a taxi, raced against a chicken (yes, that’s indeed in the game), … Suffice to say, there’s a ton to do in the game, and at the price it’s being sold it’s really a bargain. They also tried to give answers to questions from viewers, and I compiled a few of the answers they gave here:
- Given that this is a digital release, the install screen from the Japanese retail game will unfortunately will not be present in this version. If you’re wondering why people would even care about an install screen; instead of just a static screen, the Japanese version of Yakuza 5 showed a video in the background of the five main characters of the game. You can see watch it below, courtesy of Youtube user UnyieldingDragon:
- Someone asked if there were any missing songs due to licensing issues. Sega clarified that the game’s intro song will not be the same as in the Japanese version, but every other track is retained. Someone asked specifically if the song “Wild Romance” is in the game, Sega confirmed that this is indeed the case.
- Other than that, they weren’t aware of any content that was removed from the localized version. While it was challenging to localize, Haruka’s comedy section is also confirmed to be in the game.
- There’s no physical version of the game, neither for NA or EU. While this had already been confirmed several times, the mention of “disc only” on the game’s EU PlayStation Network page is making people think that the EU is getting a physical version. This is not the case.
- There won’t be any preorders for the EU PlayStation Network Version of the game, but they’ll probably run a discount on the game in the first two weeks after its release in the EU. PlayStation Plus subscribers might get something extra (I’m not sure if this means a higher discount, or something else).
- The install size of the game will be ~22GB on your PlayStation 3. This means you’ll need more than 40GB disc space available, since you also need to download the game before you can install it.
- Two weeks from now, Sega of America will be doing another Yakuza 5 Live Stream where they’ll be playing as Haruka and (I think) Saejima.
- They’re close to knowing the exact release date for the game, but they can’t confirm one yet. They’re still aiming for a mid-November release, of all goes according to plan.
Sam also mentioned they’d like to do more live streams for Sega games in the future. We hope they will! Thanks to Sega of America for the live stream and providing answers to the questions from the fans! Sega will be uploading the live stream to their Twitch stream archive, we’ll post an update when it’s available.