Shenmue 3....the silent failure?

Albatroes

I bet people didn't even know this game came out already, which is interesting since the KS for it surpassed its goal within a hour or something like that? And all the funding it got from several avenues, including the Epic exclusivity. I suppose it didn't help that the marketing for it was near non-existent.

Xarko

DMKano said:

One of the best thing about the universe is that ultimately everything is a silent failure

Things just tend to be temporarily loud inside our own heads

Kano getting philosophical in his old age.

Albatroes

DMKano said:

One of the best thing about the universe is that ultimately everything is a silent failure

Things just tend to be temporarily loud inside our own heads

I think this was deeper than you intended it to be lol.

Aeander

Silent, but derpy.

H0urg1ass

I didn't know the first two games in this series existed until the third one was announced.

I'd say it's a pretty silent series overall.

Albatroes

Arterius said:

I like the series but the main problem with 3 is they didn't even attempt to update the game. They just made it as if it was still for the dreamcast. They should have updated the game to a modern style and made it more accessible for newcomers. Now the series is dead again and we didn't even get proper closure 

It honestly makes me wonder what they actually did with all the money since the graphics only look slightly improved from the dreamcast version.

ziabatsu

That awkward moment when the OP is the only person confused about Shenmue 3. Shenmue fans know that the game came out, and they loved the game. It was nothing more or less than what we wanted/expected. A lot of the copies were preorders from the Kickstarter too, so you're not going to see them show as new purchases if that's what you're looking at. Add about 70,000 backers to what ever number you may have. 

While the sales aren't amazing, it's still on Japan's top 10 list of most popular purchases, sitting at #4 right behind Luigi's Mansion 3. 

lahnmir

Shenmue has never been a big series with huge sales and it never will be. It has its audience though and the real succes is seeing a part 3. I was a huge fan of 1 and 2 back in the day but the series demands a lot of time, amounts I simply don’t have anymore.

Shenmue is a niche series and it will stay like that, those wanting a mainstream version with modern features can play the Yakuza series.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Aeander

lahnmir said:

Shenmue has never been a big series with huge sales and it never will be. It has its audience though and the real succes is seeing a part 3. I was a huge fan of 1 and 2 back in the day but the series demands a lot of time, amounts I simply don’t have anymore.

Shenmue is a niche series and it will stay like that, those wanting a mainstream version with modern features can play the Yakuza series.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

The problem with that is that it isn't budgeted like a niche series. Someone really needs to reign it in and give it a budget more in line with its sales expectations, or it will have no future (assuming that Shenmue 3 didn't already ensure that the franchise will have no future).

Sovrath

Aeander said:

lahnmir said:

Shenmue has never been a big series with huge sales and it never will be. It has its audience though and the real succes is seeing a part 3. I was a huge fan of 1 and 2 back in the day but the series demands a lot of time, amounts I simply don’t have anymore.

Shenmue is a niche series and it will stay like that, those wanting a mainstream version with modern features can play the Yakuza series.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

The problem with that is that it isn't budgeted like a niche series. Someone really needs to reign it in and give it a budget more in line with its sales expectations, or it will have no future (assuming that Shenmue 3 didn't already ensure that the franchise will have no future).

Can you be more precise?

I mean, are you talking about development cost as compared to sales expectations? And how can we be certain of their sale expectations? Is there an article or some such thing?

Are they fine with this being a "studio passion project" and allowing it to make less money than a mainstream game? Or did they really expect that it would bring in the bucks?

Hariken

Man, I remember this on the Dreamcast. I loved that console back in the day. I had the whole kit. 2 controllers 2 memory cards and the keyboard for use of the internet. The console had a huge library of games.

bonzoso21

I enjoyed both Shenmue games. Much like the Sega Dreamcast, they were interesting, unique, and groundbreaking in many ways. Then 18 years went by and my attachment to the franchise is long since dead and buried. I knew the game released, but it's just been too damn long and I have too large of a backlog to care.

lahnmir

Sovrath said:

Aeander said:

lahnmir said:

Shenmue has never been a big series with huge sales and it never will be. It has its audience though and the real succes is seeing a part 3. I was a huge fan of 1 and 2 back in the day but the series demands a lot of time, amounts I simply don’t have anymore.

Shenmue is a niche series and it will stay like that, those wanting a mainstream version with modern features can play the Yakuza series.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

The problem with that is that it isn't budgeted like a niche series. Someone really needs to reign it in and give it a budget more in line with its sales expectations, or it will have no future (assuming that Shenmue 3 didn't already ensure that the franchise will have no future).

Can you be more precise?

I mean, are you talking about development cost as compared to sales expectations? And how can we be certain of their sale expectations? Is there an article or some such thing?

Are they fine with this being a "studio passion project" and allowing it to make less money than a mainstream game? Or did they really expect that it would bring in the bucks?

The first Shenmue was one of the most expensive games ever made, 47-70 million dollars in 2001, although a fair bit of that money was also used for Shenmue 2. These games weren't cheap, and at the time it showed, they were drop dead gorgeous and huge with an insane amount of things to do, unprecedented even. The series even invented the QTE.

As for part 3, exact costs aren't known. Their Kickstarter was record breaking with 80.000+ people donating for almost 7.2 million dollars. Then Sony stepped in and funded even more. I do know the Shenmue 3 team was only 1/4th of the size of the original team.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

ziabatsu

Torval said:

ziabatsu said:

That awkward moment when the OP is the only person confused about Shenmue 3. Shenmue fans know that the game came out, and they loved the game. It was nothing more or less than what we wanted/expected. A lot of the copies were preorders from the Kickstarter too, so you're not going to see them show as new purchases if that's what you're looking at. Add about 70,000 backers to what ever number you may have. 

While the sales aren't amazing, it's still on Japan's top 10 list of most popular purchases, sitting at #4 right behind Luigi's Mansion 3. 

lol "Fans loved the game.... sales aren't amazing."

No, fans didn't love the game. It's not on any real top 10 list.

(none of the links you posted were relevant gaming review sites, so they weren't worth quoting)

Fans can love the game without sales being amazing. It's an obscure game. It always has been, and likely always will be. You can either understand that about it or not. 

FYI, the "top 10" list I got wasn't a fan list. It was a metric list of games that literally sold the most in a certain week. Shenmue was number 4 on that list because it got the sales to make it there, no matter how you personally want to feel about it. 

All my information is from Wikipedia (the sales information), and reviews from pcgamer, metacritic, and gamespot. All your reviews were from obscure websites that people who grasp for straws visit. 

fyehu43

It went so much under the radar it's insane.