Sony has announced that it’s bringing eight games from the (mostly) beloved Yakuza series to PlayStation Plus throughout the rest of the year, with the first hitting the service in August. Be warned, though — if you’re subscribed to the base PlayStation Plus Essential tier, you’ll only get one of the games.
The whole thing is kicking off with Yakuza: Like a Dragon (a great place to start for those new to the series), which will be one of the PlayStation Plus monthly games for August. That means that you’ll be able to claim it with any PS Plus subscription — no matter which tier you pay for. The other monthly games are some heavy hitters, too. There’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2, which my colleague Andrew Webster said “might just be the perfect video game remaster,” and Little Nightmares, a horror game in the vein of Limbo. Sony’s also offering a PlayStation Plus discount on Rollerdrome, releasing August 16th, which is described as an “intense shooter-skater hybrid set in an evocative retrofuture.”
Extra and Premium subscribers will also be getting access to Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 in August, as the games are coming to the Game Catalog. Sony says that the remasters of Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 along with Yakuza 6: The Song of Life will be available to Extra and Premium subscribers “later this year.”
In some ways, this move was almost essential for Sony — the Yakuza series started out on PlayStation consoles, but for the past few years, the best way to play it has arguably been on Xbox Game Pass or the excellent PC ports. Now that Sony has reconfigured PlayStation Plus to be more competitive with Microsoft’s service, people with PS4s and PS5s (and an Extra or Premium subscription) will also be able to just sit down and pick up the series.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/27/23280886/yakuza-games-playstation-plus-tony-hawk-game-catalog