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New Ryu Ga Gotoku details

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SolidSnakex

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Looks like it really is Sega's replacement for Shenmue

The more we read about Ryu Ga Gotoku, the more we think it was crafted by people who just couldn't let Shenmue die with part 2. A recent set of updates on the game from Japan's biggest game magazines reveal a focus on reality and freedom that Shenmue first suggested a few years back on the Dreamcast.
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As interesting as the background story is, the virtual world Sega is creating for Ryu Ga Gotoku looks to be the game's most fascinating component. As with Shenmue, you have a lot of freedom in this world, from playing games in a game center, winning dolls from a UFO Catcher machine, to trying out batting practice. Other facilities include a coin locker area, a lottery ticket sales stand and a bar. The bar can only be entered once you've cleared a particular event. You can eat ice cream (although the effect is unclear at this point) at an ice cream parlor and purchase items and read magazines at a convenience store. To heal your wounds following a fight, you'll need to purchase medicine from a pharmacy.
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Kamurocho also features lots of personalities, and a good part of the gameplay revolves around substories involving these characters. In one sequence, a girl is having some trouble with a drunk guy on the street. The game gives you the option to either show the guy how to be a gentleman or just ignore the girl and go about your way. If you help the girl, she'll invite you to the bar for a quick drink. At the bar, she'll remove her coat to reveal the mega F cup that we mentioned in our original writeup. As you drink, she'll ask you a number of questions, whose answers you select from a list.
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Reality is one of the main points of the game, both Seishu and Nagoshi reveal. Nagoshi wants players to get enjoyment from merely walking through Kamurocho. Seishu, for his part, minded the details when creating the game's scenario. As part of the reality, the game does away with some of the conventions of RPGs. Instead of going to a cave in order to find an item that happens to be there, you'll go to a pharmacy or a convenience store in order to buy the item.
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http://ps2.ign.com/articles/650/650067p1.html

Definetly one of my most anticipated titles.
 
Kamurocho also features lots of personalities, and a good part of the gameplay revolves around substories involving these characters. In one sequence, a girl is having some trouble with a drunk guy on the street. The game gives you the option to either show the guy how to be a gentleman or just ignore the girl and go about your way. If you help the girl, she'll invite you to the bar for a quick drink. At the bar, she'll remove her coat to reveal the mega F cup that we mentioned in our original writeup. As you drink, she'll ask you a number of questions, whose answers you select from a list.
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Sounds like my kind of game!

Purchase +1
 
Hopefully it has a faster pace than Shenmue, and the story actual goes somewhere. I'm definitely importing this.
 
Lakitu said:
If they put all this money and effort in this game, why couldn't they just do that with Shenmue III?
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They've made 2 of them and neither of them sold well. So to put so much money into another one which likely won't sell that good doesn't make much sense. This has a better chance of selling since its a new series and has a different look.

I loved the Shenmue series, but financially it doesn't make much sense for them to try to keep it going.
 
Will spend much of time here :D

ryuga66iv.jpg
 
Sounds like a more mature Shenmue...which is something I have been dreaming since the first day I played Shenmue.
Not that I didn't like Shenmue, actually one of my favourite games...:)
 
Kamurocho also features lots of personalities, and a good part of the gameplay revolves around substories involving these characters. In one sequence, a girl is having some trouble with a drunk guy on the street. The game gives you the option to either show the guy how to be a gentleman or just ignore the girl and go about your way. If you help the girl, she'll invite you to the bar for a quick drink. At the bar, she'll remove her coat to reveal the mega F cup that we mentioned in our original writeup. As you drink, she'll ask you a number of questions, whose answers you select from a list.
Click to expand...

There's a drunk guy bothering me, so let's go to this bar and get drunk.
 
SolidSnakex said:
They've made 2 of them and neither of them sold well. So to put so much money into another one which likely won't sell that good doesn't make much sense. This has a better chance of selling since its a new series and has a different look.

I loved the Shenmue series, but financially it doesn't make much sense for them to try to keep it going.
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Shenmue 1 sold 500 000 on the Dreamcast in North America alone (Impressive for the DC) making it the 4th highest selling non 2K sports game on the DC. It sold something like 200k in Japan (Numbers are hard to track down, if some gafer could find the LTD for each Shenmue broken down by region....), and it must have sold well in Europe considering they got Shenmue II on the DC and NA didn't.

Anyway Shenmue II sold something like 200k+ on the Xbox after being the most imported game of all time for the DC, at a time when the Xbox was fairly young.

I don't think sales are low, they just aren't enough considering the insane budget Shenmue had.

Ryu Go Goto seems no different, considering there are reports of it costing around 22 million to make.

Besides, with Sega Sammy having a stranglehold on the Japanese gambling sector, Sega can now afford to finish off Shenmue. It's not like producing the final one ould be that expensive considering they already have all the art assets and groundwork done.
 
Zen said:
Shenmue 1 sold 500 000 on the Dreamcast in North America alone (Impressive for the DC) making it the 4th highest selling non 2K sports game on the DC. It sold something like 200k in Japan (Numbers are hard to track down, if some gafer could find the LTD for each Shenmue broken down by region....), and it must have sold well in Europe considering they got Shenmue II on the DC and NA didn't.
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Those numbers would be impressive if Shenmue was a game that was cheap to develop, but its not. It's generally recognised as the most expensive title ever. So it would've needed to sell alot more than that to make up for how much money they plugged into it.
 
This game looks and sounds so, so awesome. And I am an absolutely huge fan of Shenmue, and honestly, I don't look at this like a "replacement" for Shenmue. I believe we will eventually see the finale of Shenmue eventually, and hell, if this is a success maybe it will speed things up a bit. I know I'm buying it day one.
 
Zen said:
Besides, with Sega Sammy having a stranglehold on the Japanese gambling sector, Sega can now afford to finish off Shenmue. It's not like producing the final one ould be that expensive considering they already have all the art assets and groundwork done.
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They should just do a Shenmue pachinko spin-off and be done with it.
 
Just PLEASE give this game a better script and voice acting than the Shenmue series. A North American release for this game hasn't been confirmed has it?
 
Zen said:
Shenmue 1 sold 500 000 on the Dreamcast in North America alone (Impressive for the DC) making it the 4th highest selling non 2K sports game on the DC. It sold something like 200k in Japan (Numbers are hard to track down, if some gafer could find the LTD for each Shenmue broken down by region....), and it must have sold well in Europe considering they got Shenmue II on the DC and NA didn't.

Anyway Shenmue II sold something like 200k+ on the Xbox after being the most imported game of all time for the DC, at a time when the Xbox was fairly young.
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if this is Sega's GTA then they'd probably want better numbers than what Shenmue put up, starting off with a clean slate will give them a better chance of having a breakout hit
 
SolidSnakex said:
Those numbers would be impressive if Shenmue was a game that was cheap to develop, but its not. It's generally recognised as the most expensive title ever. So it would've needed to sell alot more than that to make up for how much money they plugged into it.
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True but my point was that Shenmue never had low sales, though they would of had to sell Halo like numbers to break even. It's a relatively popular franchise. You said it never sold well, which isn't true.

Even by green lighting Ryu Ga Goto and seeing it through to completion, Sega is effectively saying that making money on an individual title isn't a concern to them. This game must have started production before the Sega Sammy merger, befor they were walking in money thanks to Sammy. Either it was another stupid buisiness decision by Sega (which it was), or it was also a sign that they're willing to create a title that will never make them a profit as long as it's worth it in their eyes.

Of course we still don't have Shenmue III, but hopefully we'll see it someday.

EDIT: Found relatively final Shenmue Japan sales (considering Japanese sales trends)

Shenmue - 383,352 (So around 400k total probably)

Scource
 
xexex said:
sounds like my kind of game, alot like Shenmue!

I wonder if any of the arcade games here
ryuga66iv.jpg
will be playable :D
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If they aren't then we should organise a trip to Sega HQ to beat the team with rolled up newspapers.

If you're going to have the convenience stores from Shenmue, then you'd damn well better have the arcade games.
 
Varian said:
Not to speculate or anything, but some of the trailer reminded me of Shenmue Online.
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You shut up.

Die Squirrel Die said:
If they aren't then we should organise a trip to Sega HQ to beat the team with rolled up newspapers.

If you're going to have the convenience stores from Shenmue, then you'd damn well better have the arcade games.
Click to expand...
As interesting as the background story is, the virtual world Sega is creating for Ryu Ga Gotoku looks to be the game's most fascinating component. As with Shenmue, you have a lot of freedom in this world, from playing games in a game center, winning dolls from a UFO Catcher machine, to trying out batting practice. Other facilities include a coin locker area, a lottery ticket sales stand and a bar. The bar can only be entered once you've cleared a particular event. You can eat ice cream (although the effect is unclear at this point) at an ice cream parlor and purchase items and read magazines at a convenience store. To heal your wounds following a fight, you'll need to purchase medicine from a pharmacy.
Click to expand...
:)
 
HomerSimpson-Man said:
For a game that cost $22 million, it damn well better!!
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Remember, it's Sega. :P The company that canned the US release of Shenmue 2 when it was pretty much finished(and had already been advertised to boot). Xbox release bombed. Serves them right!
 
jett said:
Remember, it's Sega. :P The company that canned the US release of Shenmue 2 when it was pretty much finished(and had already been advertised to boot). Xbox release bombed. Serves them right!
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Oh yeah, talk about a big final FU to US Dreamcast fans.
 
What I've always found curious was the fact that both Shenmue titles were retailed at the price of about 36€ in PAL zones. No offers and bargains...No...Actual price. Considering I've payed 65€ for games like CvS2 or VJ (thanks EA for distributing Capcom's titles ¬_¬') it's pretty incredible...And more curious because some DC titles like SC or SA costed 50€. It's SEGA, doesn't make sense that a 4 GDROM title with production values from the 3035 costs less than the others.
 
Moving the US version of Shenmue II to the Xbox helped to save the franchise's viability among SEGA management. If none of the manufacturers had been willing to pay for Shenmue II exclusivity, SEGA executives were going to leave that money pit behind with a quiet release on the Dreamcast that would've only sold marginally better than it did on Xbox. Getting the funding from Microsoft to move it to another platform, however, kept the series's potential alive.
 
I disagree...One thing is if they had to develop Shenmue 2 from scratch...but the fact is that Shenmue 2 DC was finished and even released in Europe and Japan. Moving it to the XBOX was a big error and a fantastic way to piss DC US owners. It makes no sense what they did.
 
The Dreamcast release was going to come many months after the system had been discontinued and had started to lose retail support. Giving the game to that kind of a market would've been a guaranteed money losing proposition and low visibility non-event, yet the Xbox deal for the US at least allowed them to sell the North American publishing rights for a guaranteed settlement and get the game on shelf space that wasn't in the process of being turned-over.
 
It's a shame they didn't actually try to build the game for XBOX rather than simply port it. It was simply a (massively) cleaned up DC title in the end. The game looked quite dated when it was released for XBOX. :(
 
Yu Suzuki had wanted to manage his own smaller team in order to address new markets for the company.

SEGA was giving their fans a gift by even releasing a US version of Panzer Dragoon Saga and their other four final Saturn games in 1997. The market had been dead in the US for a long time, all major retailers except Toys R Us didn't even carry Saturn products anymore, and first party titles couldn't even make back their publishing expenses for SEGA with sales that couldn't reach much beyond 10k for the whole country. While their management of the Saturn had been a disaster, releasing those final Saturn games at least, when the market couldn't care less about the platform, went against most business sense in order to show support for their fans.
 
Lazy8s said:
SEGA was giving their fans a gift by even releasing a US version of Panzer Dragoon Saga and their other four final Saturn games in 1997. The market had been dead in the US for a long time, all major retailers except Toys R Us didn't even carry Saturn products anymore, and first party titles couldn't even make back their publishing expenses for SEGA with sales that couldn't reach much beyond 10k for the whole country. While their management of the Saturn had been a disaster, releasing those final Saturn games at least, when the market couldn't care less about the platform, went against most business sense in order to show support for their fans.
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01. Sega released 5 Saturn games in 1998
02. Best Buy, Walmart and others still carried Saturn product well into 1998, they only dropped the platform entirely after Sega did (E3 1998)
03. Sega was planning more US Saturn releases, Bernie killed them and drove off Sega's little remaining 3rd party support (namely Working Designs & Capcom)
04. The 3 final Saturn releases sold out their 10k shipments within days, Sega could've easily sold triple the amount or more had they done any reprints (which specialty retail was actually begging for)

...Saturn was a tough situation, but SOA's treatment of the platform in 1998 was anything but a "gift" to the 3 million strong fanbase. It was insulting. Same goes for Dreamcast... at least Nintendo knows how to put down a platform with class, Sega fully deserves to be where they are today.
 
Right: 1998 instead of 1997.

Best Buy, Walmart and other major retailers were not carrying the new Saturn games nationally. Had SEGA had their support and given them even one copy per store, they would've been shipping more than 10,000 easily. SEGA had sent out notices to their fans who were looking for the last Saturn releases that the only major retailer carrying the games nationally was Toys 'R Us.

SEGA stopped any more Saturn releases in the US because the market left for them at retail wasn't even big enough to pay back printing and distributing expenses.

SEGA did make subsequent prints of some of the last Saturn games like Panzer Dragoon Saga, but they still didn't meet the demand that was starting to build in the enthusiast market. The scarcity, in part, was probably a strategic move for publicity to raise the value of the property for when they planned to later revisit it.
 
Lazy8s said:
Best Buy, Walmart and other major retailers were not carrying the new Saturn games nationally. Had SEGA had their support and given them even one copy per store, they would've been shipping more than 10,000 easily. SEGA had sent out notices to their fans who were looking for the last Saturn releases that the only major retailer carrying the games nationally was Toys 'R Us.
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Capcom was in negociations with Best Buy to carry X-Men Vs Street Fighter (for Saturn) exclusively in early 1998... SOA killed the deal by refusing to help Capcom subsidize the 4MB RAM cart. And I myself bought Rayearth (the final US Saturn release, November 1998) at Walmart of all places.

Beyond those, EB, GS and every other national game store still gave Saturn dedicated retail space (up until Sega themselves pulled the plug). Sega definitely had the retail presence to continue limited Saturn publishing, the fact is they chose not to.


Lazy8s said:
SEGA stopped any more Saturn releases in the US because the market left for them at retail wasn't even big enough to pay back printing and distributing expenses.
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No, Bernie killed any US Saturn support because it wasn't "Sega's future". Evidently "Sega's future" was going 15 months without any console releases and driving away what little fanbase they might've had left. Strategic genius that one.


Lazy8s said:
SEGA did make subsequent prints of some of the last Saturn games like Panzer Dragoon Saga, but they still didn't meet the demand that was starting to build in the enthusiast market. The scarcity, in part, was probably a strategic move for publicity to raise the value of the property for when they planned to later revisit it.
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There were no reprints of Panzer Saga, Burning Rangers or Shining Force III beyond the initial 10,000 pressings. Even though they were near immediate sellouts and Sega was getting requests additional from retail for them.

Honestly Lazy... I can't believe any true Sega fan would defend SOA's disgraceful transitions from Saturn or Dreamcast. Hell, they even fumbled Genesis and that platform was a huge hit. But this is over the line, it's irrational... I expect better from you.
 
Honestly Lazy... I can't believe any true Sega fan would defend SOA's disgraceful transitions from Saturn or Dreamcast.
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Lazy's blind devotion prevents him from accepting any "truth".

I was quite a Sega fan myself, but they screwed the fans so many times. :\
 
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