On July 5, Xbox announced that three Yakuza titles will be added to their Game Pass service, effective immediately. The games, Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza Kiwami 2, had been available on Game Pass previously, however, were removed last year for reasons unknown. With their return, subscribers can once again play the mainline Yakuza series in its entirety, as all 8 games are included.
To be technically accurate, the service doesn’t include the original PS2 games Yakuza, and Yakuza 2, but the Kiwami titles are modernized remakes of said games, released in 2017 and 2018 respectively. The remakes follow the same central story as the originals, but with certain elements adjusted to make sure they tied well with the series’ later entries.
The first game came out in 2005, and since then the Yakuza series has garnered worldwide recognition and praise. As deemed obvious by its name, the games’ stories are mostly crime dramas that follow individuals that are, in one way or another, involved with criminal gangs in Japan. Though most of the series’ entries have action-combat gameplay, their most recent game, 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon, opted instead for a real-time turn-based style of combat, in which players can dynamically use items in the environment to mix up their attacks.
The exceptions yet to be included in Game Pass are now only Yakuza spinoffs, the most notable of which are the Judgment and Lost Judgment video games. These are action-adventure games set in the same universe, and with the series’ beat-em-up style combat, however, the player instead takes the role of a detective, and there are added mechanics such as stealth, lock-picking, and gathering up clues for investigations.
Though this is only a re-addition of previously included games, it does go to show a growing connection between Xbox and Sega. Of course, a ton of games from a wide variety of publishers are included in Game Pass. But just recently Sega announced three mainline games from their very valuable Persona franchise would be included in Game Pass as well. Sega, a Japan-based publisher, has had a strong presence on Japanese platforms throughout the years, with their titles often granting exclusivity rights to both PlayStation and Nintendo. With these recent moves, the company is showing its openness to taking advantage of opportunities on all platforms.
