Why do ppl keep thinking this way. Because of Kickstarter, epic, and deep silver they have money and he will get sales from this game to continue on the series also he has his own company now because of this.
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USGamer: Shenmue 3 will get us 40% through Ryo’s story according to Suzuki
- Thread starter LiK
- Start date
Why do people keep thinking that backers are going to fund game after game despite already having issues with Shenmue 3?
Because they will not need another Kickstarter for the fourth game. And trust me it's only a minority of ppl who are made at what happen with the way this game was handled. True fans will always be in support for this game. Restera does not speak for the masses people
Let's see if people would actually be interested in more Shenmue after 3. I don't think especially after 3, anymore than a couple thousand people are gonna actually support the franchise just like Shenmue HD. There's no guarantee of financial security/support
Shenmue 3 has just been an internet snowball that people got behind because of legacy just like The Last Guardian from the few people that actually played and enjoyed Shenmue back in the day. Once the wave is over, it's over just like TLG. No way this series has 4-5 games left in it
Shenmue 3 has just been an internet snowball that people got behind because of legacy just like The Last Guardian from the few people that actually played and enjoyed Shenmue back in the day. Once the wave is over, it's over just like TLG. No way this series has 4-5 games left in it
You know that's a good point. If I learned about this before all the EGS bullshit I'd probably feel the same way.
This has been known since Shenmue II released.. almost 20 years ago! Even then I had a feeling Yu Suzuki wouldn't live to finish the series.
Only the first when it came out.
Based on the answers I guess there is interest. For me it's hard to stay into a game over such a long period of time.
This is one of those series where I really don't mind if the story is never completed. Even after playing through all of the first Shenmue, I was super satisfied by the end of it and would have been fine if that was the only game in the franchise.
We think this way because it's not going to sell to the degree that they are wanting and they poisoned the well by how they have treated backers. I don't have any faith in them to deliver anything after shenmue 3.
What masses were hoping for a new Shenmue game? The re-release of Shenmue I and II showed me exactly why the series died in the first place.
So you don't like it, therefore no one likes it?
It's not a mass market franchise, but it's also not a niche Japanese visual novel or something. The series has its fans, clearly, and contrary to popular belief on here, not all of them feel burned by the Kickstarter. Shenmue is unique at the very least, so if it can deliver on that unique experience once more, it will recapture an audience.
Wait, people were expecting Shenmue 3 to rush the story and wrap it all up?
Honestly, even without any of the shady business, and even with how incredibly successful the kickstarter was for Shenmue 3... this series was likely always gonna remain caught between a rock and a hard place, unfortunately.
Honestly, even without any of the shady business, and even with how incredibly successful the kickstarter was for Shenmue 3... this series was likely always gonna remain caught between a rock and a hard place, unfortunately.
I mean the Kickstarter for Shenmue 3 is still the most successfully funded video game Kickstarter of all time. Let's conveniently ignore that.
There are so many factors to this that we can only weakly speculate at best. Given its relatively smaller budget, the game likely does not have to sell as much as you might expect to break even and make profit. Across PC and PS4 i think it has the ability to sell well over 1 million, and I think it's possible for that to be a success for the game given its relatively small budget and smaller team.
Shibuya Productions helped fund the game from its inception; Deep Silver helped them make it a bigger game and achieve more; Epic gave them a lot of money to put it on their store; Sony will probably have additional input on the marketing of the PS4 version. Next game around, you will have money made from S3 plus third party investment because publishers not named Sega are interested in supporting the IP. Sequel development would also be a lot more streamlined since they have the experience the look back on, the engine and technology built up, and the gameplay nailed down with the only thing needed to do is making improvements here and there based on feedback.
First up, a couple of thousand units… I stop you right there. That is absolutely ridiculous and I'll have to discount your opinion right there if you think Shenmue III isn't going to sell more than 2K units across physical and digital stores.
Seconds, nobody is saying another 4-5 games. I think the scope allows for a total of 4-5 games in the series. After condensing the original 16 chapters to 11 chapters, Yu Suzuki has said that he wouldn't mind wrapping up the series after 4-5 games, and that sounds about right. S4 by 2022 and S5 by 2025 if all goes to plan. The Last Guardian is a bad comparison to draw - sold in the same ballpark as the previous Team Ico games which continued to be green-lit, but it's also a new IP, standalone vision and it will never get a sequel.
Do you know what they're wanting or expecting it to sell? How do you know how much they'd have to sell to cover the budget not accounting for money made through Kickstarter? It could do very well for them and if it's a rock solid Shenmue sequel I think people will want to see more of that despite their gripes with how the Kickstarter has been handled. I doubt the next one will even need to be crowdfunded.
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As a fan I'm good with this. Attempting to squish not only the story but also the variety of locales meant to be visited down into one quick finish would be awful. This series is no Yakuza in all its rehashing glory, 1, 2, an now 3 all took place in very different and new places as opposed to the exact same one every dang game. I hope the series can make its way to a conclusion in game form regardless of how many sequels it takes. Its just that if they come back for another round of crowdfunding I won't be there.
I don't but I know they kept asking for money than brought a publisher in and got even more money from epic, so it makes me doubt that they will make a Shenmue 4 without crowd funding or even if they are going to try to.
It's rather simple, if Shenmue III sells well enough than the said publisher would be encouraged to fund the next sequel.
Or maybe Sega can get off its ass and help their own franchise. Either way Shenmue III has to perform well enough, and make enough profit to warrant a sequel from another publisher.
Well, I mean I hear Suzuki and the argument and all, but the franchise has been dead for 17 odd years. Shenmue 3 funding went well and should do moderately well, but I don't blame some for seeing it as an opportunity for 'here is your closure' instead of 'here is part 3, maybe part 4 and 5 will come sometime maybe'
It's so strange to me that someone would want an ultra-compressed, rushed version of a narrative, just for the sake of wrapping up in one more game. I don't see how that would please anyone. I mean, does anyone think Metal Gear Solid 5 had the best narrative of that series?
I want this story to get there full treatment it deserves. It would be worse to have a poorly executed conclusion than an incomplete story, in the scenario where they can't continue beyond Shenmue 3.
At the pace he apparently insists on going there is no way he will ever finish the story. It took 15 years just for him to get barely enough money to make this one sequel happen. I'm not sure how anyone can have confidence that we will ever get the entire story so I would rather he do something to at least give us some kind of closure rather than one more cliffhanger that never gets resolved.
I'm not necessarily confident that we will get to the conclusion. But what I would be confident in is that it would be a complete disaster if they attempted to stuff the remaining 6 chapters into a single game. Just getting to the ending isn't going to be rewarding if everything before it is a mess because they had to rush to it.
I guess you were never interested to Shenmue otherwise you would have known that by ages.
Honestly, with the kind of money they throw around for exclusives, they could easily fund the next few if they were willing.
Yeah but that's predicated on the notion that everything he wants to include in all 6 or 7 remaining chapters is actually necessary to the story. I really doubt that is the case, and I find it hard to believe that he couldn't provide some reasonable and reasonably well done closure in one game. The Firefly series and subsequent movie, Serenity, is a great example of how to do that. Whedon was planning on making several seasons of Firefly until Fox fucked that up. Then he got one chance, thanks to fans' love of the series and their demands, to make a movie and give us some closure, and he fuckin' nailed it, IMO.
Unless Shenmue III is a runaway, out of this world success, we're not going to get 6 more installments. It's entirely likely we get no more after this. I'd rather get some kind of closure, even if it's a bit rushed, than just another installment that goes nowhere. Different strokes, I guess.
I've always known he originally planned it to be a 16 chapter series. I also assumed that, given he was lucky as hell to get the chance to make even one more game, he might modify that vision even slightly, but nope. But sure, I guess I don't care about Shenmue unless I obsessively follow every tidbit of development, because no one would ever not do that out of a desire to go into the game with a fresh look. Way to be super presumptive, friend!
Sure. If they were planning exactly that, it might be a good idea to say so.
Edit: and certainly I would imagine that the crowdfunding well will run dry for a Shenmue 4, unless it's going to be a text adventure.
He has adjusted. The 2nd chapter got cut way back in the day (the boat chapter) and multiple chapters were combined to make Shenmue 2. He has also stated at most 2 games after this is necessary with the way that he has reshaped the story.
Also, they've stated that they will be able to reuse a majority of the assets created for Shenmue 3 for a sequel(s), so it'll be a lot cheaper to make. They obviously won't have every location/character/etc. made, but it'll certainly help to get started much quicker on creating the game.
So um instead of a new kickstarter for Shenmue 4, can they just ask Epic for a check instead of taking a loan from us gamers and taking exclusivity rights the last 6 months before release? Lol
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be proven wrong about this, and if I am I'll gladly go back and buy Shenmue III and any subsequent sequels, but I don't feel the need at this point to invest in the game knowing that, at present, nothing is going to be concluded. Just getting this project going has taken a good deal of work and luck and at this point Shenmue is a seriously niche product with little real recognition among a lot of gamers today (hell, a good chunk of people on this site weren't even born the last time a Shenmue game came out).
Did Whedon have the entire story plotted out years in advance, or was it just a case where he knew they could make more seasons or movies if it were successful enough? Because Shenmue's whole story has been plotted out for a long time now. But Suzuki has seemingly gone back and saw what he could dial back in order to cut down on chapters. It started out as a 16 chapter story and is now an 11 chapter story. So i'm not sure if there's anything more he could do in terms paring back how many chapters it has.
Well as someone else has said, if the game does well enough there will be added publisher interest in backing the next game. Shibuya Productions will likely be involved regardless of how it performs. It might even attract Sega to help, if it's as successful as the average Yakuza game. I don't think that's at all out of the question. The crowdfunding of S3 was important to make it happen but also served as proof to publishers that people still care about the series and are willing to support it.
I'm not sure where people are getting the "6 more games" from. Each Shenmue is comprised of multiple chapters and Yu-san has said that the series would ideally be finished after a total 5 games, so after S3 comes out this November, only 2 more games would be required to finish the story as more recently envisioned. You think there's nothing worse than investing only to not getting closure again, but I think the game coming out a rushed mess is worse - and you have the GoT avatar so you must be well aware of the damage that a rushed process can do to the legacy of a beloved series.
I can't answer that first question with certainty, but he did say that the movie dealt with events that he had planned out for the end of season 2.
Anyway, my initial reaction was probably more defeatist than it needed to be. It was just kind of a shock to see him say "this only takes us 40% of the way". If he's got a plan going forward, that's great. Like I said in a previous post, I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love for this game to be a success and get more sequels, but as much as I love Shenmue, I'm just not that optimistic about it.
Then again I also thought Arkham Asylum was going to suck and that ended up being the single best superhero game ever, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I loved GoT's last season, so did a lot of people who exist outside Reset, and also let's please not devolve this into yet another argument about that show. This forum has 9,000 of those threads if we ever want to do that lol
They won't need another Kickstarter? Says who? Shenmue 3 is going to sell like shit and probably review very poorly. You know this right?
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off that the creators have one chance for a new opus in the Shenmue series to conclude the story, to appease all the fans, yet they decide to progress the story incrementally, hoping there will be many more entries. Like, geez...Why take such a gamble? What happens if Shenmue 3 is not the success they anticipated? I mean, I sure hope Shenmue 3 is a success because I'd pick a 4th entry, and a 5th one, and a 6th one, but I feel like this is such a huge gamble that I'd rather wish they end the Shenmue arc and start a new one if they ever can.
I don't see the parallel to TLG. It wasn't crowdfunded, it just spent a long-ass time in development. It also was never meant to be a series.
Also it was actually amazing when it came out. This looks like a game from the mid 2000s, and I don't think anyone but the hardest of hardcore Shenmue fans will be pleased.