Video: SEGA Shares "First Look" At Yakuza Kiwami 3's Combat Gameplay

In before the people flock to get mad about Game Key Cards like it's the devil once again

@Fighting_Game_Loser If folk want physical let them. It's not hurting you. No one is mocking you for spending your hard earned money on nothing.

@GrailUK I'm not even trying to defend the Key Cards themselves, I do think they are inefficient in many aspects, but the amount of people treating something like it as one of the most pressing issues ever, even just in gaming, is so forced and overblown that I'm just trying yo make fun of that

@Fighting_Game_Loser fair enough I think it's perfectly blown and obviously a big issue. Not only in video gaming but on a larger hyper capitalism scale. Everyone and their uncle are already copying World of Warcraft's subscription model. At it's peaks of what, 12 million subscribers, it opened everyone's eyes to how you can get someone to buy something and get them to pay monthly to use it! BONKERS! Now everything is becoming a subscription service. And some regimes in the world would love nothing more than conformist consumers.

"Video: SEGA Shares "First Look" At Yakuza Kiwami 3's Combat Gameplay!
...Game-Key Card release also confirmed"

Man_excitedly_looking_inside_the_fridge_and_getting_disappointed.gif

There is nothing wrong with game-key cards. It's still physical media and you can still resell them, which is important. I'll buy this game, play it, and then sell it to buy more Switch 2 games.

@Sambuc no mate, they suck. The worst thing about collecting is the environmental impact of producing and shipping this stuff. When it’s contains just a unlock code that’s just pointless.

@GrailUK They're not spending their money on "nothing" They're spending their money on a game which will play EXACTLY THE SAME whether it's a Game Key Card or not. Some of you are really weird with how you talk about Game Key Cards.

@Sambuc I'm starting to think wealthy physical game collectors just don't understand the benefit of cheaper games AND being able to sell them on after for many of us or that most gamers have no intention of keeping their games forever rather than playing newer games. But their whinging and boycotting will likely just lead to more digital only games in the future, not "proper physicals"

We're seeing it already with Pac Man World 2 Re-Pac being digital only in Europe which really sucks as we can't sell it on for another game like US gamers getting a Game Key Card. Well thanks Game Key Card haters 👎🏻

@Fighting_Game_Loser Some people act like it's a human rights abuse. I saw a comment on here saying people who release Game Key Cards should be jailed 🤣

Gotta love the sycophants chiming with "hErE coMe tEh ComPLaiNeRs".

It's amazing how people whinge and moan about those who actually care about upholding some degree of standards in an industry (and customer base) so susceptible to forfeit them to our collective detriment.

No-one's begrudging digital enthusiasts of their choices, so stop begrudging us of ours.

The Switch has been something of a haven of physical media with so many indie games and under-appreciated gems getting their time in the sun, so it's quite disheartening that Nintendo have so monumentally screwed up their handling of physical media this generation (for example, why in God's name are Switch 1 spec cartridges not being used/repurposed for smaller scale Switch 2 games?!), and enabling third parties to release crap products for virtually nothing while passing on substantial costs to the consumer isn't helping the situation.

In this particular case though, I am cautiously optimistic that LRG will pull through with proper physical releases of many of Sega's releases, but it's a pathetic reflection on Sega for not having the backbone to widely release such products themselves, especially with the Switch 2 being such a runaway success (though I suspect that continued GKC releases will only serve to jeopardise adoption of the Switch 2 in the long term).

@SillyG

enabling third parties to release crap products for virtually nothing while passing on substantial costs to the consumer

Not true. Game Key Cards are cheaper. I brought Tony Hawks 3 + 4 and Street Fighter 6 for £29 not long after launch. Plus they can be sold on unlike regular digital games.

I was referring to the cost of the storage required for the games themselves.

And £29 (AU$60) for nothing on a cart, plus storage costs is hardly a bargain considering that I was regularly spending AU$60 or less on proper physical releases last generation. AU$30 or under is where I just might be tempted (albeit very rarely) on a GKC, though it's still unideal, and it would need to be one hell of a game to tempt me (L.A. Noire was one of extremely few "download required" releases that I caved in on, and only because I was able to find it brand new and sealed for under AU$30).

And SF6 didn't even include the DLC flag on the cartridge itself, which makes the release even more frustrating (and secondhand customers would miss out on that content without an additional purchase either way).

@SillyG Why do you have to have everything on there at all time? That's a choice, you can just download the games you're playing at the moment and smaller titles. That's what I do.

So what's the reasoning behind the use of Key Card with this one?

Please Nintendo, do something ASAP to stop this madness!

@SillyG And I've also just seen Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2 (Game Key Cards) are only £24.95 each at The Game Collection. Bargain!

@Suketoudara : Kiwami 1 on a 32GB cartridge via LRG was only US$35 (£26), but sure, the empty cartridge is a "bargain!"

@SillyG That's a Switch 1 game (that ran horribly BTW) that had different cartridge formats so not really a relevant comparison but you're right, that was also a bargain.

ANAKI! Yakuza 3 is a solid Yakuza game I will definitely double dip and pick it up at some point.

The next one Yakuza 4 is a slog though, they definitely need to change the pacing on 4.

The Game Key Card discussion ruining most articles now is getting boring, either accept it and move on, or just not buy these games and move on. I wonder if the complaints will stop if all these game key card games would release digital only instead, because that's the alternative the devs will choose in the end.

don't care. will still buy physical and play and enjoy the game.

@Suketoudara You have been sold on the 'experience.' I get it. And it's a shame you thinking wanting an asset is "weird." But a guy that decides to stop playing video games tomorrow doesn't really have anything to show for it. I stop tomorrow, I can sell all my games and do something else. It is so far from weird it hurts.

@UltimateOtaku91 "or just not buy these games and move on".

Do you mean people shouldn't buy 95% of third party games? Getting only first party games would be a shame in a console with so much and so great external support.

I don't know if that's the correct way to go...

@Fighting_Game_Loser Game key cards are the precursor of the death of physical games. Withou physical games we can't buy used anymore and big corpos like Nintendo Control the prices even more.

This is one of the worst things to happen in gaming and unfortunately Sony and Microsoft will probably follow the same path.

It also signals another issue with the digital era, we own less and less. Corporations are only selling licenses to use and not products anymore, they revoke access and do as they please.

While in the surface level game key cards seem like a somewhat inocuous issue, they're a symptom of a dangerous path where were fully controlled and dependant on what the companies dictate to us.

"You'll own nothing and be happy."

Yep, buying these games. It's time to get into Yakuza.

To be honest, I was hoping they'd just release the 3, 4 and 5 triple pack to Switch 2. If they're going to Kiwami them all up it's going to take ages, and the story in 3 is terribly boring. (But I've not played 4 and 5 yet).

Thanks for making my decision easy! Guess I'll just buy all third party games on steam now! If I'm getting things digital, I'd rather use a more consumer friendly platform.

@Pat_trick They've been doing this stuff for years without key cards. This has been the path the entire time, and no moaning we do will change it. It's best to use your frustration on things that actually matter more than video games being on a piece of plastic

Looks so fluid and sublime. Can’t wait!

@Fighting_Game_Loser we can fight back by not purchasing gkcs. Big companies always follow cash; if nobody invests, they will adjust accordingly.

Thats a key card I will purchase one day when its gotten discounted.

Gkc? Sounds like a good reason to delay buying till it goes half price. No FOMO

I get the complaints about game key cards, I really do, but what do people expect? These cards are prohibitively expensive. Even a game key card itself is probably still more expensive than a Blu-ray disc. Even Switch 1 carts are overly expensive.

This is why companies need to just offer made to order services or something for physical games. Then they can charge higher prices for it. (That's to avoid retailer anger over digital being cheaper, at least with big games, which is stupidly still a serious consideration. Otherwise, they'd have to make both versions more expensive.)

Can't people just enjoy games without going on diatribes?

Combat looking good as it usually does from RGG action games. Will pick this up on PS5 to play through Dark Ties.

I might get eventually on Switch 2, when heavily discounted.

I love how everyone is getting tired of the key card debate because they are fine with being reductive; just a piece of plastic indeed. Same people probably agree with paying for online and microtransactions.

@MS7000 Some people are getting tired of key card debate because some us want to have an actual discussion about the game it self.

There 44 comments and only 5 is about the actual game itself.

@AverageGamer That's great. So talk about the game. I did in my comment. Unfortunately, you get people like yourself and the second comment here who draw attention to Game Key Cards with statements like "Inb4 all on cart" or "In before people say Game Key Card bad". If you are truly tired of it, stop talking about it. But you won't.

I would agree that it's silly when people complain about people complaining about game key cards. The bottom line people like what they like for their own reasons. In the case of most games coming out on a GKC, it is a big deal because a lot of people purchased their switch 2's thinking they would be able to continue to purchase what they wanted... ie... physical media with games on them. In this case almost everything coming out is a download and that's it. You may like the color blue, I might not.... I don't chastise you for liking it so why would you chastise me for not liking it. I personally am a collector who loves not only playing games but collecting them as well. That's where I want to spend my money, and the fact that switch 2 barely has any games that are sold on cartridge really sucks. And I do believe it should be my choice if I wanted to collect empty pieces of plastic or not. It's basically the thing that has gotten me out of game collecting for roughly 5 decades. I think that's something worth complaining about, especially when Nintendo pushed GKC's as simply an option, now they are basically the rule.

@AverageGamer This is kinda the point, it's a pretty big deal for many reasons. People aren't so much talking about the game at this point because they are not able to purchase the game in a format they like. Ie.... Nintendo's dumb decisions are keeping people from the games they should be talking about. So instead I suppose we only have the fact that we aren't getting the game to talk about, which leads us back to why we are not getting the game. You could say Microsoft and Sony have done the same thing, hence why I stopped collecting on their systems and Nintendo became the last bastion of hope we would continue to get physical games. The fact that Nintendo said we would and they still use the cartridge slot at all kinda led many to believe they were still safe for another generation. We were not. Oh well, it was a fun ride at least.

It.... looks like Yakuza. I'm... definitely going to play it.

I think it's safe to assume all games are key card unless otherwise specified. No need for it in the title every time. It's kind of annoying

@AussieMcBucket Basically a physical cartridge that when inserted, downloads the digital version of the game. You have to keep the cart inserted to play, but otherwise just a physical way to play digital games

@Cipher36 “ People aren't so much talking about the game at this point because they are not able to purchase the game in a format they like. Ie.... Nintendo's dumb decisions are keeping people from the games they should be talking about.”

Here a fun idea then…. Move on from the game then. They let us know from day 1 it was going be key card. Developers are exactly hiding it. Continuing to complain about it in a comment section isn’t going solve the issue.

@MS7000 I don’t talk about. I personally don’t care 🤷

Inb4 comment are memes to make fun of the who do. If did I care… I wouldn’t have bought the system in the first place. Nintendo could rot in their own poor decisions.

@AverageGamer You're still here, and not talking about the game? I did say you won't stop.

@AmanPikon I'm sorry, I was being facetious. 😅 Thank you for explaining it though!

@MS7000 I’m not talking about it cause there no reason to. The comment section already been ruined, and cause your comment irks me. Assuming that everyone who sick of hearing the debate being reductive

@AverageGamer So you don't care about Yakuza/Like a Dragon then? You get irked by comments on articles for games you care nothing about? It sounds like you are actively trying to pick fights. If anything, you are ruining the comments by not contributing anything at all. Have fun with that.

@AussieMcBucket Oh lol

@MS7000 “ So you don't care about Yakuza/Like a Dragon then?”

If I didn’t care about Yakuza… I wouldn’t be here now would I? I not commenting on the game cause the moment I mentioned anything on it. It’ll get drowned by the same annoying debate that has taken over every comment section for last 6 months.

@AverageGamer Yeah, still sounds like you are looking for trouble otherwise you would have said something else by now. What do you think about the Rikya/Nakahara/Hamazaki recasts? Are you looking forward to spending more times with the kids at Kiryu's orphanage? Are you excited to listen to Tamiya's plot dump again? Or are you playing 3 for the first time off the back of 0, 1 and 2 when they release?

Nah, you are just here to argue and moan.

@AverageGamer OK, so then basically I don't have anything to talk about during the Switch 2 era based on the fact that what went from an option, to pretty much every 3rd party game is now a Game Key Card? Nah..... I'm sorry I bought my Switch 2 with the intention of getting games for it. If I'm interested in a game I should probably be able to discuss it, sadly if I'm not willing to pay full price for an empty card all I know about said game is that I don't own it. That's what I'll talk about. You do you.

@MS7000 Never played 1, 2, or 3… So the recast means nothing to me.

I’m here to look at the visuals and talk about performance (resolution/frame-rates)

@AussieMcBucket I’m wondering the same, people haven’t really been talking about them much

@AverageGamer Well, not quite what I was hoping, but I'll take it. Fair if you have not played the original 3; might be a blessing as the new cast won't have to compete with the old cast.

Realistically, I am expecting 30fps at 1080p for Kiwami 3. I am optimistic it could be better, but I will be surprised if so. Kiwami 2 runs at 30fps on PS4, but this is also the first time Dragon Engine is running on Switch 2, so could be something to look forward to as maybe they have had time to tweak the engine for Switch 2.

@SplatRay001 We should definitely do something about that. Perhaps more coverage. Anger seems to get attention - do you think we should say something to incite rage about them?

@Fighting_Game_Loser In my case no energy is being spent at all on this. I didn't buy a Switch 2 and Nintendo can go f itself. For me the problem is solved.

But if people want to voice their discontent, let them.

"Game-Key Card release also confirmed"

Epic fail. Skipping these then. Switch 2 is horrible for 3rd party games.

Hmm GKC, fine by me.

Gives me more reason to get it on PC then (cheaper storage, Switch 2 memory cards are still rather expensive)

@Fake-news except..... When you buy a game, play it, sell it to someone else who wants to play it and on and on, you actually reduce waste and everyone saves a little money. Actually a much better system.

@GrailUK
Doesn’t seem like it’s hurting them. It’s a joke, unlike the influx of comments that complaint about it, which is odd because I don’t recall Nintendo walking back something based off a Nintendo Life comment section lol

@SnakeMacReady What's Nintendo got to do with it? It's a SEGA game. The only thing Nintendo wil lose is like 20% of a sale which I won't make. I'm not convinced you know how the industry operates lol.

@GrailUK I meant some of the language around Game Key Cards was weird to me like calling a game that plays exactly the same and has benefit of being a digital copy you can sell on (unlike regular digital) for some of us.

I don't think collectors are weird, but I do think there's something of a delusion that physical games are like the physical of old sometimes, when in reality the formats that these games come on can make them unplayable in 20 years time and so many games have free patches and updates that the version on the cartridge no longer really has the whole game on it like they did back in the day (Animal Crossing New Horizons is a great example, you can't even swim in the base game and there's no Redd, Brewster, Capp'n etc!) Personally physical games lost their magic to me when they stopped having instruction manuals, even though I do still buy a mixture of physical and digital.

@Suketoudara Yep, I totally see your point

@AverageGamer if you don’t like reading about people’s opinions or complaints about something, don’t read their comments. It’s really that simple…

@Liam_Doolan Heads up, typo in the update: "Kirya's."

I'm a little bummed I played 3 not too long ago. It wouldn't be worth it for me to play Kiwami 3 anytime soon, no matter how good it looks (and likely will be, based on the quality of the other Kiwamis). Maybe someday!

Oh neat. I would never buy a GKC.

Nice! Cant wait to play this gem.
The GKC kiddos are awake again. Boohoo, no go back to mommy to clean that diaper 🤣🤣

Jokes aside. Even tho i dont like it, i still buy it. With that its still possible to buy it cheap second hand or on sales. Or lend it to a friend.

I'll be buying it on PS4, physically from Japan.

Some people say that this GKC problem will end up with the games being only digital. Which is fair, actually. However, I know I'm not alone here, I NEVER EVER buy digital games at full price (if they are the same as physical). I only get them when they've gone on sale and the price is reasonable (actually, when they cost less than 30 bucks). So I doubt that's the way companies want to go...

It's the same with books. You can't expect to be charged the same for a physical book and for an ebook...

Game key card is better than digital
Problem was that nintendo forgot to put a hard drive on switch 2.

@GrailUK "on nothing." Seriously stop this nonsense. If I buy it and get to play it it's not nothing by default. And you don't just randomly lose access to it in a year or two but, if at all, in decades.

I think the game key card is a perfectly valid thing to talk about for all these games like that. I wanted to watch the video, and get hyped but I don't need to waste my energy when I know I'm not going to buy it. Switch 2 doesn't have enough space, and sd cards are too small and too expensive. I'd have considered picking it up if it was on the cartridge, but there's no chance now. These companies are losing sales.

@BTB20 Dude, it's not nonsense. It's lierally nothing. Reproduced with a click of a button with zero manufacturing lol. And they charge full price for it. You in all due respect are deluded. I get you are still playing something, but I don't know if you think it's magic or something...

@GrailUK it totally is, we can no longer have carts that allow us to have games when servers for a console are done with. It's a huge deal in gaming longevity, and further removes ownership of a game from you, the consumer. Im surprised people dont get that. This is just me shouting into the void but id love if nintendo life would also have an info column for game key or real cart. Id love it in big bold letters on articles, it saves me time on deciding if its even a game ill consider

@Orwellian87 Kinda hard to do that when the entire comment section it literally about same stupid thing over and over. 🤷

I’ll be searching for minute to find no comments about it at this point…

@SillyG Well said.

It's always interesting seeing some people defend game key cards and bash those who are against them. I understand why so many people hate them. It's not true physical media and is an excuse to snatch ownership away from gamers. That's not including the environmental impact of shipping thousands of pieces of plastic with no significant data on them. A lot of people aren't budging on their stance on this format and I don't blame them.

If it means that we can have great looking games like this and ff7R then I’m ok with GKC it’s that or nothing? What about people who only own a NS2? , they never get to play games bigger than 64gb, I would rather GKC than code ina box personally

@AverageGamer just ignore it. No one is forcing you to read them.

This is one of the few websites where a lot of the audience loves game key cards.

Game Key Card? That's a shame. Would've bought it otherwise, guess it's piracy then. :/

@Fighting_Game_Loser

Are you able to see the irony that you're complaining about people complaining before they get to complain?

I love how a huge chunk of 3rd party games on Switch 1 came with only the smallest portion on cart and you HAD to download the rest to play the game but now everyone compares it to Switch 2 as if it was some perfect physical haven.

GTA Trilogy? Not fully on cart.
Every single sports game? Not complete on cart.
Mega Man Collections? Not complete on cart.
Resident Evil Collections? Not complete on cart.
Mortal Kombat games? Not complete on cart.
LA Noire? Not complete on cart.
Assassins Creed games? Not complete on cart.
Spyro and Crash Collections? Not complete on cart.
Bioshock and Borderlands collections? Not complete on cart.
Final Fantasy 10? Not complete on cart.
Devil May Cry collection? Not complete on cart.
Wolfenstein 2? Not complete on cart.
Hogwarts Legacy? Not complete on cart.
Tony Hawk Remakes? Not complete on cart.
Batman Arkham Collection? Not complete on cart.
MGS Collection? Not complete on cart.

Do I even need to continue?!?!?!?! You people saying "the grass was greener" live on some other planet or didn't play any 3rd party games on Switch 1 to begin with lol

Yakuza 3 was a really great game and it made me fall in love with the series. An Ex-Yakuza fighting criminals to save orphans, so cool.

@CaptainCluck I don't even think that many people here genuinely love GKCs. It's just there's a lot of Nintendo fanboys who will bend over backwards to defend Nintendo no matter what.

@Solid_Python The problem is on Switch 1 fake physical releases were the exception, not the rule. So we'd complain about those individual releases, and then move on.

On Switch 2, fake physical releases are the standard. It's an epidemic. That's why the backlash is much stronger.

Also, your FFX/X-2 example isn't great, cause all the hardcore physical fans know you can import that from SE Asia to get a complete physical version. 😉

Also, some of those collections you listed had at least some of the games complete on the cartridge (for example, the Mega Man Legacy Collection, which is part 1 on the cartridge and part 2 as a download code). So for me, releases like that were worth picking up at half price (Put 1/2 of the games on the cartridge? Then I'll only pay 1/2 of the price at max.) Whereas with GKCs on Switch 2, you literally get nothing on the cartridge.

@Orwellian87 if people don't buy third-party games on gkc, they will adjust by not putting games on the Switch 2, not by putting games on cartridge.

@IronMan30 oh noooo.

It’s simple, just get the game on ps5 if you want the physical.

"This two-in-one release will arrive on 12th February 2025"

Interesting. Now we just need a remake of Back to the Future for Switch 2, so we can travel back in time for that release date.