I've made it no secret how I feel about Sega's Yakuza series. After playing the Yakuza 3 demo that came out on the Japanese PlayStation Store, I was pumped. Psyched even. Just when I thought life couldn't get any better, there was word that Sega was unsure about localizing the game for Western audiences. Now, nearly five months later, there's still no word on whether or not we'll ever get to see Yakuza 3 on our store shelves. What's more, even Sega's marketers don't believe the game is getting ported.

Late yesterday, the Examiner reported that sources inside Sega's marketing department revealed the company had no plans to bring Yakuza 3 stateside due to the poor sales of Yakuza 2. If a game that came out in 2008 on either the 360 or PS3 had only sold 40K copies, I'd call it a loss, but Yakuza 2 came out for the PlayStation 2. Sure, it's not 1 million, hell, it's not even 100K, but to sell around 800 copies a state for a system on its last legs is at least mildly impressive. Alright, maybe not.

Perhaps what's most interesting about all of this is that the Examiner has since added a disclaimer to the original article, which reads as follows.

... the statements made earlier are not official Sega statements.

Oh. Well that's an interesting twist. I sure do hope that Sega finds the motiviation to bring Yakuza 3 to America. I think with the right marketing, the game could be a pretty solid hit for the PS3. I can't reiterate how imporant better marketing would be. Perhaps it might be best to restructure the entire marketing department so it's not full of liars and cheats and brigands and... ahem. You'll have to excuse me, I tend to get a bit carried away when talking about this game. In short, Yakuza 3 possibly maybe not coming to the US... unless it is. Maybe.

[Source]