After fourteen years of waiting to make this game, I think Yu will probably be signing those copies of Shenmue III with pleasure.
SHENMUE 3 kickstarter (PC/PS4) - FINAL DAY - NEW KS RECORD GO GO GO!
- Thread starter Mr. RPG
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You'll note that the original poster chose to describe these for-profit businesses in terms of cowardice and heroism - my response was pretty tame.
Of course, if you want to analyse my words literally and in isolation, then you're absolutely right.
Acquiescence
Member
The first one hundred copies anyway. And that's when the tedium starts creeping in.
Shadoken
Member
Sega should definitely indulge a bit into this. Nobody honestly expected this level of reaction from the Kickstarter. Castlevania and Megaman are two legendary IPs that have sold millions throughout their lifespan. In comparison Shenmue as a franchise is barely at $2m. Sony/Sega and even Yu didnt think this was gonna top that.
After the reaction and positive press , Sega should throw in some funding. After all it IS their IP. If Shenmue 3 ends up becoming a huge game and sells millions. Sega benefits the most by making a Shenmue 4.
Throwing in a few million $$$ now is worth the risk given they could potentially revive one of their IPs. At the very least make a HD remake and use some of those profits to fund Shenmue 3.
No other Sega IP in recent history has received this much media attention other than Sonic and Total War.
After the reaction and positive press , Sega should throw in some funding. After all it IS their IP. If Shenmue 3 ends up becoming a huge game and sells millions. Sega benefits the most by making a Shenmue 4.
Throwing in a few million $$$ now is worth the risk given they could potentially revive one of their IPs. At the very least make a HD remake and use some of those profits to fund Shenmue 3.
No other Sega IP in recent history has received this much media attention other than Sonic and Total War.
sechsterangriff
Member
I wonder if they're saving a a PR announcement for the final push. Either a considerable donation or Shenmue I & II HD.
I also like to think some old guard executives that were at SEGA at the time would like to make some donations
There's a lot Sega should have done with Shenmue III, mainly fund its development themselves and not have Yu go looking for funding on Kickstarter. Expecting Sega to get off their ass at this stage and help the game's development is the height of wishful thinking.
Shadoken
Member
Just look at it from a purely Business standpoint , 2 games that have sold 2m with a 70m$ budget is pretty abysmal. Yes the platforms had a part to play in it as well , but even then.
It made more sense for Sega to focus on smaller games and keep a consistent profit instead of mega dumping million on a single game Activision-style.
In some sense the Kickstarter has been probably the best way to market Shenmue. We as Fans are literally voting with our wallets , we are showing the world that this game wasn't just some random game people used to talk about. It had enough of an impact to last 14 YEARS. This message proves Shenmues quality WAAAY more than some shitty ad trailer that Sega might have made for Shenmue 3 by themselves.
Yeah, SEGA funded 2 Shenmue games to the max and lost millions. It isn't so adventurous a company these days, but no one else is buying the IP and taking the risk of funding it either, hence the KS.
Things would obviously be different if 3 was a great success. SEGA should chip in to make that happen, but that could look bad. Anonymous contribution.
Things would obviously be different if 3 was a great success. SEGA should chip in to make that happen, but that could look bad. Anonymous contribution.
Shadoken
Member
We have kept the hype train rolling for a month. If Sega had decided to just bring back Shenmue in 2008 or something.
Most people would have just scoffed it off as some old franchise making a return.
AAA development would have costed a bomb.Japanese devs never really used UE or something to simplify development. It would have reused tons of Yakuza stuff and felt very similar.
Oh and Sega's amazing marketing /sarcasm
In so many ways this is the best thing to happen to Shenmue , the only thing slowing us down was all that negative press about Sony's involvement. But id gladly take that over all of the above that would have happened.
Most people would have just scoffed it off as some old franchise making a return.
AAA development would have costed a bomb.Japanese devs never really used UE or something to simplify development. It would have reused tons of Yakuza stuff and felt very similar.
Oh and Sega's amazing marketing /sarcasm
In so many ways this is the best thing to happen to Shenmue , the only thing slowing us down was all that negative press about Sony's involvement. But id gladly take that over all of the above that would have happened.
it's not defeatist, it's reality. sega have already done something incredible in just letting yu use the licence for a new game.
Shadoken
Member
Yup its a good long term move. Throw in some money now to keep the IP relevant. They can make it back via Shenmue 4,5,6 if 3 becomes a big hit.
Who knows , maybe in some alternate future Shenmue is a money cow for Sega like Assasins creed , and they milk it every year in different locations. Ryo travels to Thailand,Canada,UK,Singapore,Brazil..etc LOL.
i mean, they made losses, but didn't yu confirm that money was made back and then some by virtua fighter 3 alone?
shenmue was meant to be a long term project that became profitable. in the same way the yakuza games are made, it seems the plan was to create a set of tools and technologies to build several games out of and make a profit through the sequels rather than the original project.
sega not funding shenmue is understandable, but some people made shenmue into a scapegoat for yeaaaaaars of the poor hardware and software management going on with the sega higher ups for nearly a decade
Alright, went ahead and backed it for $60! Kept telling myself I'd do it before the campaign ended but I just know I'd have forgotten to do it if that happened haha. It's fine if this takes forever to ship. It's fine if this game sucks.
Give me 3 notes from the theme song and Ryo Hazuki's awkward voice acting and I'll be happy.
Give me 3 notes from the theme song and Ryo Hazuki's awkward voice acting and I'll be happy.
hey buddy there's a soundtrack tier and custom voice message tier from ryo's voice actor
nudge nudge wink wink
thanks for pledging!
So their plans fell apart because Dreamcast sales were limited. No tiny installed base this time.
i mean, we'll see how it goes. a proper reintroduction to shenmue via a HD collection and two E3s worth of hype? could do quite well. shenmue never had hardware sales on its side, which makes the original's 1.5 million sold an incredible and undervalued achievement.
we're doing alright today i think. first 12 hours are always kinda quiet anyway. got another five and a half hours of 'today' on kicktraq. hopefully we'll just about match yesterday.
Augemitbutter
Member
those early sketches of ryo/akira are really cool. miyawaki is a pretty great artist and i'm hyped for that art book now.
edit:
this one is particularly cool. it's like the halfway point between akira and ryo.
very nice.
VistraNorrez
Member
I wish I knew what is going on over at Sega. We know these behind the scenes videos for the KS were shot in March. So how long has YS been talking to Sega about making Shenmue 3 on his own? A year? You figure they had to discuss the re-release of the first 2 games. It's a benefit for Sega and Ys Net. There are 2 times to strike with a release on these games: during the Kickstarter and within months of the Shenmue 3 release. Hell they could release the first game at the KS launch to test the waters a bit. Then release Shenmue 2 down the line if the first was a success. It would be kind of nice to get Shenmue this year, Shenmue 2 in 2016, and then Shenmue 3 in 2017.
i would not be surprised if they did not find it viable. they've obviously been proven wrong now, but the narrative that has built over the last decade and a half about shenmue being a niche title nobody wants to play has built into a perceived truth even to the point where people ignore the extraordinarily good sales of the first game on the dreamcast.
when the KS finishes as the highest funded video game kickstarter, and it will, it'll turn enough heads at sega to start taking the series seriously again. they've warmed up to it in recent years for merchandising reasons, but now they should seriously start to consider those HD releases.
VistraNorrez
Member
Yea I can't imagine Shenmue 3 bombing in sales. And I wonder if it's successful enough, will Sega actually decide to fund 4 or is it all in Ys Net hands now?
*4 games, only 2 of which were released, for $47 million
we got some of that today in the video. hopefully we'll see more in the coming days.
I was under the impression the original Saturn work was not close to done. Do you have any reading on this you can point me to?
Considering the video the saturn build has all the way up to the end of Shenmue 2 I think it was pretty far along. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foZUcPQAMvg
Most of the video is cut scenes and I don't think games are necessarily made in a linear fashion from beginning to end.
plus the second game was basically crippled across two consoles
which is disappointing, because shenmue II is a lot more palatable to general audiences and seriously should be played by more people.
I'm still amazed by what Sega was able to pull off with the Saturn. If this was released it would have easily been one of the best looking games of that generation.
graphical tweaks and cutscenes are definitely not made at the start of development. i wouldn't even wager they'd be in such a good state as shenmue saturn even at the middle of development either. the fact that it looks like that and actually runs is astonishing. there's no way there wasn't some significant work done.
Yeah, it looks amazing. I actually may prefer one or two of the character designs from the Saturn version. I'm not saying significant work wasn't done. But 45% and 85% are hugely far apart despite 45% being significant. The weather and character scheduling stuff they probably did not have working and they likely didn't begin voice acting work, so even if a lot of the game was done there were still huge time and money sinks they had left.
I'm more interested in learning what was done than arguing, though, so if you have any sources for anything I'd like to read them.
Laevateinn
Member
One thing I think gets lost in all this talk about how well Shenmue sold is that the Dreamcast was one of the most pirated consoles ever. I knew a lot of people back in the day who bought one for that reason alone. That Shenmue sold as well as it did considering that and the Dreamcast's low install base is pretty remarkable.
Wow. Sega did what? Something incredible you say? How bloody generous of them! Are we even worthy of their miracle?
No. Sega do nothing more than waste our precious oxygen. I want them to die and their IPs sold and realised by more deserving companies. And i say this as a guy who bought ALL their hardware.
Ryo Hazuki
Member
Does anyone else stay out of the Kickstarter comment section?
yep.
do you know how rare it is that a business just puts an IP in the hands of its creator? actually i can't think of a single instance where something like this has happened. sega aren't great, but just letting yu try to get this off the ground on his own is as good as we're going to get out of them.
nobody other than AM2 and yu suzuki can really tell you how much of the game is done. like everybody else i'm just going on what we saw. the fact it runs at semi-acceptable framerate for the saturn is incredible. shenmue started development as early as 1993 when yu took his research trip to china for virtua fighter. we didn't see shenmue released until late 1999, and if i remember rightly it wasn't shown off for dreamcast until the year before. there was some significant work put into shenmue before the dreamcast. it's all guesswork based on dates and the footage though.
I've only made a few comments. It's a bit awkward to view.
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
They are legit stupid for not providing PC+PS4 pledge. I would back that so hard! I don't want to use two accounts. Screw them for being so incompetent.
Upsidedown Fuji
Member
I wonder how things would've been if Shenmue actually released on the Saturn first. Would it have been as special? I'd like to think so but it was probably partly due to the Dreamcast that Shenmue has an extra aura of infamy and sparkle to it.
The graphic fidelity is incredible for its time, especially for the Saturn. I'm amazed the faces look so rounded and very similar to the final designs found in the Dreamcast version. This game would have been eight CDs long if they had used voices as well. Crazy.
The graphic fidelity is incredible for its time, especially for the Saturn. I'm amazed the faces look so rounded and very similar to the final designs found in the Dreamcast version. This game would have been eight CDs long if they had used voices as well. Crazy.
Closest I can think of is vavle letting jerri elseworth keep her research and launch castAR, which was equally as shocking
Remember when a Sega president gave ~$500 million in shares back to the company after the difficulties with Dreamcast? That'd never happen here.
Cloudius12
Member
1.5 hours I think.
neat. those things get archived somewhere right?
Shadowman16
Member
To this day that video still amazes me. I remember watching it originally just after finishing Shenmue II for the first time and I was blown away by how good it looked for a Saturn title. Plus like you say the video shows scenes all the way up to the end of Shenmue II so they must have been fairly far along in some aspects to have designed all those separate areas...
Plus they started production on shenmue in 1993 and that video is from about 1997. No way they werent very far along.
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