SEGA of America and Europe have issued a new press release announcing the release date for Yakuza 0! The game will be released on January 24, 2017 in both physical and digital form (so Europe will get physical copies as well this time around). For preorder links, you can visit the official website here. It appears it will also be possible to preorder the digital edition, although it’s not available yet at the time of writing.
This past weekend saw the arrival of Wonder Festival 2016 Summer and a large haul of promotional images for SEGA, Atlus, King of Fighters, and Kantai Collection-related garage kits. We’ve included an exhaustive list of relevant announcement/work-in-progress images below. Please be advised that some of the garage kits and/or their source links are NSFW.
Sega has released a major promotional video for Yakuza 6, now officially subtitled as “inochi no uta” or “poetry of life.” The trailer bills the game as the final chapter of the legend of Kazuma Kiryu. What does this mean for Kiryu and the future of the Yakuza series…?
Yakuza 6 will take place in Jingaicho, based off of Onomichi, Hiroshima, alongside the series’ mainstay location of Kamurocho. This new location is important since Haruka is involved in a life-threatening accident in Hiroshima, and this prompts Kiryu to meet several new characters and discover a new world in Hiroshima. But as we see in the video, Kiryu and Haruka are still tied to the yakuza, the Tojo Clan, and Kamurocho.
SEGA Europe have uploaded the latest SEGA Central episode to their Youtube channel, which almost entirely consists of an interview with SEGA’s Toshihiro Nagoshi, the man behind the Yakuza series, but also other SEGA games such as Daytona USA, Scud Race and the Super Monkey Ball series. Among other questions, SEGA Central asked Nagoshi about his most memorable moments of the Yakuza series, and also of his entire career in the gaming industry. They also ask if he has a message for the Yakuza fans. You can view the video below!
Last night, Toshihiro Nagoshi participated in another SEGANAMA stream on Niconico. It was announced then that preorders for Yakuza 6 will open on July 26th. No details on actual release date at this time, but presumably they’ll be surfacing in the near future.
Incidentally, Nagoshi was accompanied by ex-Konami producer Hideo Kojima. Here’s a post-show image taken from Hideo Kojima’s English Twitter account:
Additionally, the Japanese official website for Yakuza 6 has launched. It provides this article’s featured image. There really isn’t a lot to see here at the moment; as the preorder date approaches, hopefully the website will be filled with more content.
Haven’t had enough Yakuza 0 Media? Sega of America have uploaded a promotional trailer to their YouTube account for Yakuza 0, to celebrate its appearance at E3 2016. It’s relatively short, and it’s nothing new, but it’s one of those things that are helpful to watch when there’s downtime. Especially if it’s being shown around the convention itself, competing with the dozens of games vying for attention on the floor.
Yakuza Fan writes that the Yakuza Kiwami OST is now available online. The OST is being made available via digital download and is comprised of 33 music tracks.
Amazon.jp and iTunes have the album on their stores. Untaxed, the album as a whole runs for ¥1500. However, customers have the option of buying music tracks individually, and each track costs ¥150.
RPG Site appears to have secured information regarding Atlus / SEGA’s stage show plans for E3 2016, as indicated by this tweet. This was heretofore an unannounced aspect of the company’s attendance, even after the recent publishing of the press release detailing the games that would be present at E3.
Here’s a listing for the presentation schedule. Please keep in mind that there are no known plans for streaming of stage presentations to be directly handled by Atlus. It’s possible that presentations might be archived or broadcasted at some time, but this is not confirmed in any public manner. All times are PDT.
E3 2016 is next week: June 14-16th. The hype train and rumor mill for all sorts of games are already active. Some fans might even get lucky with the leaks that are coming out recently (anyone here like Dead Rising?)
Meanwhile, Gematsu has recently published an article detailing a partial list of games confirmed to be playable at Sony’s E3 2016 booth. King of Fighters XIV (listed as being published by Atlus) and Yakuza Zero (listed as being published by SEGA), both of which will be available for the Playstation 4. These are great opportunities for both games. King of Fighters XIV is making the rounds at conventions and fighting games tournaments, and added exposure will only help the game. Meanwhile, Yakuza Zero will surely receive much attention and has a bit of a history with Sony due to the #buildingthelist campaign.
Towards the end of February, it had been noticed that two different branches of SEGA would be representing the company at E3 2016 – Atlus USA and SEGA Europe. While at first this may have raised questions about the whereabouts of SEGA of America in particular and what plans there would be for any upcoming English-localized SEGA titles from Japan, we now have our answer courtesy of an update to the Atlus USA profile on the official E3 2016 website. Quoted below:
ATLUS U.S.A., Inc. is known for high-quality, deeply immersive, uniquely Japanese and indie video game experiences. Our award-winning catalog continues to grow across a variety of genres and platforms. Visit our booth featuring highly anticipated titles from ATLUS and SEGA, including Persona 5, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, and Yakuza 0.
Interestingly, there’s a wide swath of genres listed in this Atlus profile page, including Fighting/Wrestling, Indie, Music/Dance, Role-Playing, Strategy, Action, Adventure, and Localization. These cover virtually all modern active gaming platforms. So we can probably expect more than what’s listed at the description, at the very least. With yet-to-be-released titles such as Valkyria Chronicles Remastered (releasing later this month!) and Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X, this is to be expected. Nevertheless it must be said that this doesn’t guarantee that these two titles in particular will be present, though we would hope to see a generous offering of titles on display.