Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Coming To Steam

A lot of gamers have been worried about Steam support and high-end third-party games fleshing out the service for those building Steam Machines, but as Tecmo Koei made evident with their announcement today, PC gamers need not worry about third-party support because more console games are arriving on Steam than ever before.

Blues picked up the press release from Tecmo Koei who made it known that the undead, zombie hack-and-slash third-person ninja-ploitation game would be arriving for Steam simultaneously with the Xbox 360 and PS3 launch early next year, in 2014.

Tecmo Koei America's Amos Ip commented about the news, saying...

If this news sounds too good to be true, it almost is.

While a simultaneous release of Yaiba on PC alongside the Xbox 360 and PS3 seems awesome, take into consideration that Tecmo Koei announced the game for Windows PCs. Bummer.

As many of you know, the dedicated Steam Machines will run on SteamOS, which is derived from a Linux core. This means that Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z could only be streamed to a Steam Machine, unless it dual-boots to a Windows OS.

However, the game is still a ways off from release, and while Linux support is unlikely, it's not impossible. If some third-party publishers would offer Linux support out of the box we could easily see the SteamOS pick up... well, steam.

Still, I think it's at least a good first-step by Tecmo Koei to even offer the console-based hack-and-slash title to PC gamers. In all honesty I just didn't expect the game to even be made available for PC audiences, so that's a huge step up for the PCMR right there.

For those of you who have been considering whether or not you want to get into PC gaming but fear it may be too expensive, there's a build you can make with a high-end CPU, RAM and HDD option for only $550 that gets you everything you need to get your system up and running.

It seems like a really good time to get in on the PC gaming arena before you commit half a grand toward a next-gen console that may or may not bring you the kind of gaming experiences you're looking for, which is not to mention that they will lack mod support, free online multiplayer and they embrace controller prejudice that prevents you from using the kind of controller you feel most comfortable using.

Anyway, starting next year you'll be able to get in some good gaming time with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z for home consoles and PC. It kind of goes without saying which one will be the better version and offer more graphical prestige and versatility... not to mention that the PC version is probably bound to cost a few dollars less than its console counter-parts... unless Tecmo Koei pulls an Activision.