Yakuza 3 Might Be Speaking English
Yakuza 3 was a big hit in Japan when it released for the PS3 and while Japan will soon be getting a 4th installment, people out west are still waiting on the 3rd game to be released here. While Sega has announced the game for release to western audiences, it was believed that English voice actors would not be present in the game, that it would just be subtitled. Well that might not be the case after all.
In a recent podcast with 4 Guys 1 Up, Sega of America Studio Director Constantine Hantzopoulos spilled the beans on Yakuza 3 and the fact it most likely will have English voice actors. Constantine had this to say about the costs of bringing a game this big over.
“The bulk of the cost is actually the voice overs. A lot of lines in Yakuza 3, so obviously the more expensive it gets, you wanna land the right actors, voice the right parts.”
“Whenever Sega brings a game over to the US and makes the investment, the heavy investment, into localization, we’re talking over 500, 600, 700K to localize this game. Lot of voices, lot of different peeps, lot of different characters.”
When asked for further details, possibly which English voice actors were being hired, Constantine simply said that they had nothing to announce as of yet. Yakuza 3 is due out in March of 2010, though if the voice actors have not finished their parts, we could see a delay on this one. As always though, stay connected to PlayStation LifeStyle as more news breaks on this story.
3 Responses to “Yakuza 3 Might Be Speaking English”
I heard the podcast last night and heard the same thing but the 1up guys didnt question him about it and the podcast was recorded only a week after the game was announced for the west
umm…okay. if anyone played Ryu Ga Gotoko 3, they would know that there are parts in the cutescenes that use english, which the player isn’t supposed to understand. It would be like in star wars episode 4 (a new hope) to have someone discussing in french that darth vader is luke’s dad, and then just subtitling it for french release, obviously every french person would know what will happen in the next episode. Yakuza 3 features a similar moment.
I hope they have the original audio also, I am not at all fond of dubs.