by Sappharad » Tue Oct 18, 2016 6:16 pm
Rockstar has a history of delaying its games. GTAV was originally due out in Spring 2013, it was delayed until September. The PC version, despite being a completely different situation got delayed multiple times. GTA4 was delayed as well, originally slated for October 2007 and eventually released in April 2008. The first Red Dead Redemption was delayed from April to May 2010. Pretty much every title Rockstar has released in the past 10 years has been delayed.
I think both games will probably get delayed. I don't think Shenmue 3 will have any issues meeting the deadline when it comes to assets that needs to be created (environments, models, etc.) but coming from a software development background I think their main development schedule is very aggressive. It sounded to me from the schedule like they're going to do the majority of the gameplay programming next year. Think of all of the stuff they'll need. Mini games, battle system mechanics, interactions with various world items like vending and toy capsule machines, fishing, menu systems, etc. Many of those things are independent from one another and can be worked on by different people. But if they want to meet a December 2017 deadline, they need to go gold by late October to ensure manufacturing time and even that's risky. Consider Final Fantasy XV as a recent example. The game was delayed so they could include what would have been the day one patch into the retail release. The original planned release was finished in August. The actual "gold" build that will be released on November 29th we know was finished at the end of September, exactly 2 months before release.
Back to Shenmue 3, if they want to release physical copies in December they need to be done by late October. They will also need at least 6 weeks for testing and fixing of problems. In other words, the game should be completely playable from start to finish with bugs roughly by the end of August. That's about 8 months for "full production" phase of development. It's possible for them to make the December 2017 release. I will be impressed if they do though. I don't know of any high profile kickstarted game that was ever finished on time.
I agree with others that say Shenmue 3 won't be significantly impacted by this. It's a very different type of game, and December is a great time for Shenmue 3 to come out because it will be at the front of people's minds when making their holiday wish-lists.
Edit: I forgot to mention that another big title in the Shenmue 3 launch window will probably be the FF7 remake. They've said it will be split into multiple games, it's been in development for at least a year and a half now, and I will be surprised if the first part doesn't end up being released during the 2nd half of 2017.
Sappharad has received a thanks from: Peter