So, I´m not really familiar with the Yakuza series, but familiar enough to know the series isn´t popular in the West....given that, I don´t know if Sega is somewhat hopeful the game sells moderately well (they decided to bring the game to the West, so I guess they must be to some extent!)..but releasing it right next to FFXIII and God of War 3 sure isn´t helping it!!

They don't need the money.

Alien VS Predator is rolling in the dough...

I can't imagine this game selling much at all regardless of when it's released.

They don't expect much sales. Japan is what keeps the series healthy.

@Dgc

Is the game kind of a 'hidden gem'?...I never played a Yakuza game before, but I´m thinking about Y3 being the first one I play.

Well we dont have any sales record of Yakuza 1 for NA, Yakuza 2 sold roughly 50k in NA....I think Sega clearly knows what they're getting into when bringing Yakuza 3 to the west lol.

With almost 30k of Yakuza 3 preorders i'd say Sega should be fairly happy with that.

But im glad they're still bringing it over to the west as im a fan of the series and hope they'll bring over Yakuza 4 in the future.

 It's the combination. They want to keep the cost as low as possible since they know it won't sell that much, and so that they can make a profit by selling it full price.

I can say as a hradcore SEGA fan in the USA, I have never played the game.

No they aren't. I will be picking up Yakuza 3. It's actually a very good series. Think of it kind of like Grand Theft Auto meets Street Fighter (without the balls of fire). To sad that lots of people won't even check it out. It's a much better game than a lot of the crap that's out today.

On a side note: Yakuza 2 was played(at least by me) with Japanese VA and english subtitles by default, I don't even know if it had english voice acting. And the graphics for this game are really good, I remember when they were first showing this game off.

They didn't put a lot of effort in the US port (no English voice acting) so I'm pretty sure Sega never expects it to sell a lot in NA in the first place.