Personally, I can live without Shenmue III . There, I said it; and, honestly, that's how I have felt for a good few years now. It's not that I've lost all hope in it ever happening - rather, I've just come to realise that I can live my life just fine without it, as much as I still wish for it to happen. Ask me if that was my attitude seven years ago, however, and I'd have tornado kicked you through a wall.
As for the HD collection - that is something that I really want to happen. More than any other game that I'm looking forward to (or even hoping that will be announced, including Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes and The Witness , my two most anticipated games of the year), that is the one I want most. The reason why? Well, other than the fact that we'll be able to play Shenmue in beautiful HD (maybe even with uncompressed textures) with all of the accompanying upgrades, it's because a whole new world of gamers will be introduced to it.
Even if they don't do a physical release, think about the numbers: combined, all of the digital marketplaces out there total well over 150 million members (of which probably 70% are still active); granted, only a very small fraction of those people will even consider buying Shenmue , but there's 100% potential there.
The Shenmue HD collection (or each title, if they decide to sell them separately) could easily hit 150,000 sales on XBLA alone, so just imagine how many it'll hit combined with PSN and Steam, etc. The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection has sold over 1.5 million across all platforms as a physical release, with fuck-knows how many digitally. If Minecraft (a game that I'm really not a fan of) can clear five million sales on XBLA, why can't something like Shenmue ? And, who knows, maybe it'll be a massive hit with people.
That, and it really can't be that hard remaster a game, can it? I have no hands-on experience in this field, but if it's simply a case of upgrading the graphics, applying in-game and controller-related upgrades, and the like, that doesn't sound all that horrible. Again, I can't say for sure.
So... yeah.
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