Sony Just Gave Us A Reason To Buy An Xbox Series X On Day One

I’m fairly sure I just found my reason to buy an Xbox Series X at launch. Since the console was revealed, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has been promoting their newest game as a launch title for Microsoft’s shiny new toy. The Yakuza series has spent decades as a Sony exclusive until recently. For me, Sony has been my console of choice and playing Yakuza on PlayStation just feels right. However, Sony just announced that Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the next game in Sega’s long running series, would not be available on PS5 until late Spring. Late Spring!? I love Sony, but my FOMO will not be able to handle waiting that long and playing it on a current gen console just won’t feel right. If it were more of the same Yakuza that we’ve grown to know and love over the years, maybe I could wait it out, but this is something quite different than that.

The tale of Kazuma Kiryu has been laid to rest (for now) and a new story is about to begin. This time around you’ll take on the role of Ichiban Kasuga – a much more emotionally charged character than we are used to according to Sega. Also gone is the beat-em-up gameplay we’ve become accustomed to in the series. This time around there will be a lot more RPG elements involved including turn-based battles. The setting is also taking a departure from the core series and leaving the Kamurocho behind. How you play the game seems to be entirely up to you. There are something like fourteen different styles of fighting that you can learn. I was sad to hear that Kiryu wasn’t going to be in the limelight this time around, but the game looks like it’s going to be a ton of fun. It’s easy to look at the Yakuza franchise and think the gameplay and setting were getting stale and, while there were definitely areas that dealt with repetition, the story was so good it made every trip back completely worthwhile.

I’m not sure if there was money involved, if Microsoft is brilliant, or if Sony completely dropped the ball on this one, but this might just be enough for me to buy in to the Series X on day one. Lets be honest, that was probably going to happen anyway and though Game Pass is incredible and worth every penny, I really wanted a new game to play at launch if I was going to shell out that kind of money for two consoles within a week of each other. Sony keeps showing me launch games that have me excited for their new console and had Like a Dragon been a PS5 launch game I probably would have at least considered waiting on the new Xbox and I definitely would have played it on the PS5. But it’s not. And I can’t. At least until next March. And I just don’t think I have the patience for that.

So here you go Phil Spencer, you’ll get my hard-earned money and I’ll play a Yakuza game for the first time on an Xbox. Who knows, maybe it will become my console of choice for the franchise… probably not, but you never know.