Over the weekend, Sony’s inaugural Playstation Experience [PSX] kicked off with an extensive keynote featuring new details and announcements for the Playstation brand and platforms. Among these announcements, several highly requested games confirmed to be coming to the console over the next year thanks to the #BuildingTheList initiative to get fans to tell Sony what games they want to be brought to the vita.

This included Suikoden 1 & 2, making their first appearance on both the PS3 and Vita this week for North America and early next year for Europe. Originally released on the Playstation in 1997 and 2000 in Europe, Sukioden 1 & 2 started the series, which has since seen several sequels on the PS2, PSP & DS and has a dedicated fan following. With no major news on new or remastered Suikoden games over the past few years, fan projects like Suikoden 2.5 emerged to keep the spirit of the Suikoden series alive.

Yakuza 5 was also annouced to be coming to the PS3 next year, which should be good news for fans of the series who’ve been begging Sega to localise the newer Yakuza [ryu ga gotoku] titles for the West, despite supposedly low sales for previously localised Yakuza games. The two most recent English versions, Yakuza 4 and Yakuza Dead Souls have also just been released on PSN following this announcement, for anyone wanting to catch up on these titles to prepare for Yakuza 5 next year.

Gamers have been asking for both of these series for a while, especially with the original Suikoden games, so it’s good to see that Sony’s listening to what people want to play on PS3 / PS4 & Vita. Hopefully they’ll keep up at this pace and continue to bring niche & fan favourite titles to their platforms.