Sega giveth, Sega taketh away. The Yakuza 6 release date has been delayed (boo!) but a demo is coming sooner than you can say Dragon of Dojima.
The sixth entry in the quintessentially Japanese series is heading to the West on April 17, 2018, as confirmed by the game’s official Twitter account. For those of you just itching to get your hands on Kiryu Kazama and the gang before the Yakuza 6 release date can play through the Yakuza 6 demo when it arrives on the PlayStation Store later this month on February 27.
Details for the delay are thin on the ground, with the developers stating the new release date will “give us more time to line things up for launch.” Yakuza 6 was released in Japan back in December.
Reading between the lines, it’s probably down to a few localisation issues and a case of bug testing. The Yakuza games have a great track record of bringing across its pulsating personality to the English versions. With the increased glare of the spotlight falling on the series outside of its native Japan comes bigger scrutiny – this may just be a case of Sega playing it safe.
If you’ve only just got into the series through either Yakuza 0 or Kiwami or have always wanted to scour the streets of Kamurocho looking for a scrap, then good news: you’ve got more time to catch up on this criminally underappreciated series.
The Yakuza 6 demo, meanwhile (if it replicates the Japanese demo which was pulled from Western markets), weighs in at a shade over 33GB. It not only allows you to play up until the middle of the first chapter, you can even import your save data across to the full game upon release. No word yet if karaoke has made it into the demo, however. That might just be a deal-breaker.
