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    A free-roaming action-adventure series starring Kazuma Kiryu, a former member of the Japanese Dojima crime family who is drawn into conflict against several Yakuza gangs. The franchise's games are marketed as realistic criminal simulations.

    What are the chances of a PC port?

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    deactivated-5a923fc7099e3

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    Poll What are the chances of a PC port? (160 votes)

    No chance at all. 51%
    Maybe. 44%
    Definitely. 5%

    I really hope that Sega sees the light and releases a PC port of the PS3 Yakuza games. But at the same time I feel like Sony has a strong grip on the franchise and I'm not sure if they would allow one of their core exclusive franchises to be ported. How big do you think the chances are that we'll see a PC version?

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    OurSin_360

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    I think i read somewhere that sega was thinking about bringing yakuza to pc, so i would say it's a definite maybe.

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    hans_maulwurf

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    #2  Edited By hans_maulwurf

    Checking wikipedia real quick brings up that some Yakuza games have apparently been released on wii u in japan? So if that means that Sony actually doesn't own any part of the franchise, why not? Sega seems to have been on a roll the last couple of years in bringing all kinds of their games to the pc, whether people do (Bayonetta) or do not (Viking: Battle for Asgard) care about them.

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    hermes

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    #3  Edited By hermes

    It is not that Sony has a hold on the franchise, but that it has, historically, being poorly supported by Sega.

    Fans of the series has been asking for western releases of those games since last decade (even subtitled), and just recently they started paying attention.

    I would love for those games to get to PC, but if you expect SEGA to pay a single extra dime to make it happen, you should not wait up.

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    Pepsiman

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    PC ports I don't think are out of the question. Sega is almost certainly aware of the demand since many of the main people connected to localizing and marketing the series have a social media presence. But probably one of the big sticking points is the prospect of relicensing both a bunch of brands AND actor likenesses. There's an abundance of both throughout the series that potentially make this quite a pain since these things are likely negotiated on an individual basis and the sheer volume and prominence of both types within the main stories means they couldn't just necessarily quickly remake some assets and call it a day. As mentioned in a previous reply, there is precedence for it by virtue of the Wii U ports for 1 and 2. But those also sold rather poorly (albeit I'd say more due to demographic and marketing miscalculations than anything else), which might be another point against it. It'd also be a pretty big gamble overall considering they'd need to rely on foreign sales even more so than previous ports for a series with comparatively less (albeit growing thanks to 0) exposure. I'd make that bet myself if I were in that position, but it's tough calculus to make the numbers line up wholly favorably to make the suits actually paying for it feel comfortable in doing so, I imagine.

    Barring all that, I also suspect that the Yakuza Team would rather do the porting work themselves, given how messy Binary Domain was at first when it first came out on PC. But whether they have the time and resources to do is another matter altogether; they're known to have multiple projects in the pipeline right now and are set to announce them next month, so if ports aren't one of those projects, they just might not have the bandwidth to do that stuff at the moment.

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    GenericBrotagonist

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    I really doubt it. Maybe before, but a year or so ago Sony started pushing it as one of their big exclusives. After that the series went from being so niche that it was taking years for new entries to be localized, to getting widespread exposure and coverage in the west. I don't think they'd give that up anytime soon.

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    deactivated-64bc6edfbd9ee

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    Probably no or it wouldn't be good. Remember the yakuza dev team made Binary domain (which uses the same engine if I recall), and that port was rough.

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    damodar

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    #7  Edited By damodar

    It certainly doesn't seem out of the question. I do think SEGA understand the value of the PC platform, stuff like Total War and the Football Manager series do really well for them there and they've had some decent successes with PC ports of a lot of other things.

    As others have said, Binary Domain is on PC and that's the Yakuza engine, as far as I'm aware. Although, it's only been mentioned that that port was rough when it first came out. I wasn't aware of that part, because by the time I got around to playing it, it was a pretty flawless experience. I was rather pleasantly surprised just how well optimised it was by that stage.

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    hans_maulwurf

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    @damodar said:

    As others have said, Binary Domain is on PC and that's the Yakuza engine, as far as I'm aware. Although, it's only been mentioned that that port was rough when it first came out. I wasn't aware of that part, because by the time I got around to playing it, it was a pretty flawless experience. I was rather pleasantly surprised just how well optimised it was by that stage.

    I played Binary Domain at release and I also don't remember any problems. It actually ran pretty well on the modest pc I had and it looked gorgeous at the time. I ran into some nvidia optimus compatibility problems when I wanted to play it on a laptop years later, but besides that it worked fine.

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    DarkbeastCaarl

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    Not until Yakuza 7 at least. Every yakuza game slated for western release is only a matter of localization. Yakuza 6 and kiwami are done being developed and have been out a while so I doubt sega wpuld spend money working on them again. Also pc gaming is smaller in japan so Id say even after 6 comes out 7 onwards have maybe a 5% chance of a port. As for the current set of "recent" games 0/kiwami/6 Id say there is almost a 0% chance

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    deactivated-5a923fc7099e3

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    @hans_maulwurf said:
    @damodar said:

    As others have said, Binary Domain is on PC and that's the Yakuza engine, as far as I'm aware. Although, it's only been mentioned that that port was rough when it first came out. I wasn't aware of that part, because by the time I got around to playing it, it was a pretty flawless experience. I was rather pleasantly surprised just how well optimised it was by that stage.

    I played Binary Domain at release and I also don't remember any problems. It actually ran pretty well on the modest pc I had and it looked gorgeous at the time. I ran into some nvidia optimus compatibility problems when I wanted to play it on a laptop years later, but besides that it worked fine.

    As far as I remember I hadn't any issues running binary domain either although I don't think I got it at release. Sega ports have been pretty solid so far. I'm playing Valkyria Chronicles atm and that one plays great for the most part, as did Bayonetta.

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    OMGFather

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    Surprised at the poll. There is definitely a chance with how Sega has been going lately. I'm sure people at some point said Bayonetta and Vanquish would never come to PC.

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    ajamafalous

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    How's the PSO2 port coming

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    Pepsiman

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    #13  Edited By Pepsiman

    To clarify my earlier remarks, I did some digging because I knew there were complaints about Binary Domain at launch, but apparently they primarily revolved around unoptimized keyboard controls as a shooter, which definitely impacted its reception at launch. I don't believe it was otherwise badly optimized, as that's also where I happened to play that game myself eventually. Still, it was a rocky enough launch and Yakuza being that team's baby in general that I think they'd still rather do the work themselves, if circumstances permit.

    Also, Yakuza primarily existing on Sony platforms up until now ultimately has little bearing on the equation one way or the other. Sony ultimately has no ownership stake in it, so Sega can do with it what it likes and, as with the Wii U port, has been known to occasionally to go against that grain for its own business interests. The director of the series I believe has gone on record saying that it's primarily on Sony platforms because Sony was the most supportive of it conceptually at its outset and has continued to maintain that support. I otherwise highly doubt that there are any formal exclusivity contracts; these sorts of semi-informal reciprocal relationships are a cornerstone of Japanese business dynamics. Yakuza was one of Sega's first real breakout hits after leaving the console business behind and has probably stuck mainly with Sony platforms because of that legacy; Sony understood the property and was there for it at the right time. But now that Sega is in an overall better place than then, I doubt it'd seriously ruffle any feathers if they did decide to put in the time and money for PC ports. Sony as a company has displayed an overall neutral attitude towards it as a platform and clearly doesn't particularly view it as a threat to its own business in games.

    @ajamafalous said:

    How's the PSO2 port coming

    PSO2 is more of an issue of resources needed versus perceived potential return on investment, especially if they were to hypothetically commit to maintaining platform parity with Japan (PC, Vita, and PS4). The text localization costs alone even before doing any editing, let alone voice acting, would likely be significant at this point after multiple expansions. Even if Sega was feeling like spending some money, which it can be for the right games, getting up to speed with where the Japanese version is at would be basically nothing short of a death march for any localization team now since they missed their point to stay in-sync at launch; either you're hiring a small army of translators to quickly produce a rough draft of probably several million words' worth of text at this point or you're only hiring a few translators, but they're basically working at a breakneck pace anyway that only begins to stabilize after they've gone through and translated every previous patch's new content, of which there's a lot. These are all assuming working conditions for such a project would be optimal in terms of resources given to such a team and their ability to have access to the developers for any problems that arise, things that you can't always guarantee. I know the English fan patch is a thing that already exists, but the logistics behind a project like that are dissimilar enough from how a localization at that scale is done that you can't really compare the two.

    Then you get the costs of marketing and maintaining the game. Both are extremely important and costly because of its nature as a F2P game (ie: revenue predictions become more complicated to make when you can't make the same guarantee everyone has already bought into the game at $X with a retail package as was the case with the original game) and I think this is ultimately where the equation has fallen short, as Jeff has discussed previously on the Bombast. Phantasy Star Online certainly has its foreigns fans, but I don't know if it's big enough at this point to both ensure a healthy launch after already committing to the significant expenditures mentioned above and then also help continually drive new players to join the game and buy into its F2P systems to help pay for the maintenance and customer service staff that come with running an online game 24/7. Their best shot at making that work would've been within the launch window of the original PC version when all of that initial groundwork would've been somewhat smaller, but nowadays, the case is really tough to make and I say that as someone who really, really loves PSO2.

    PSO2 was clearly a case of them counting their chickens before they hatched. If they hadn't announced the localization and shown off their work in progress version when they did and waited until they had more solid data, it wouldn't be nearly the sort of specter it is over the English fanbase that it is today. People would probably be in the dark about Sega's logic for not bringing it over in English outside of SE Asia, but at least their expectations would've been kept more in check, especially in the wake of the restructuring (read: staff culling) that happened at their American (and I believe European) offices within roughly that same time period, which is what probably ultimately sealed that localization's fate.

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    shtinky

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    Most likely. Sales are dropping in Japan due to lack of interest in PS4, and it sells poorly in the west, so now's the time to bring it to PC.

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