I posted this on the main thread but I think it belongs here.I've got some big reservations about what i've seen so far from a marketing comms perspective. We have a long way to go yet but the initial announcement created a huge noise, the Shenmue community have turned this up to 11 and generated a huge buzz online promoting interest in Shenmue way beyond just the gaming press. Honestly the hype generated by the online community is priceless, can't be manufactured, can't be bought and can't be replicated, it's been unbelieveable.

While there will be a comms strategy for Shenmue III the game, imo the project needs something akin to an election campaign, an overall comms strategy to tell every gamer that they simply must play this game, which i see no evidence of. For instance the design of the kickstarter is poor, the reward tiers and benefits have gaping holes. Somebody overseeing all of the project from an overall comms perspective would have seen that straight away, nailing the kickstarter is just as important as nailing E3, momentum is everything with Shenmue III . The silence of Sega has also been deafening, not a statement, not a tweet, retweet, like, simply silence. The HD remakes will have a huge impact on the success of Shenmue III and the fact they are letting Yu have the IP should have been part of the E3 presentation. Sega's absence is strange and unhelpful. Sony have been off message in the last two days and have not got a consistent line regarding their involvement, i've heard 6 different lines from Sony spokesperson's which is unforgiveable. It all points to a bit of a mess on the comms front. In contrast the community have been incredible and masked some of these early mistakes.

I've no idea who Biscay is, i'd never heard of him before the Shenmue III kicksarter was announced. Publicly criticising Sega for not allowing a third party and I include Yu in that to walk away with the rights to Shenmue is completely unprofessional and does not bode well. Sega sunk huge sums of money into Berkley/Shenmue, Isao Okawa at the time basically "kickstarted" the Dreamcast and furthermore footed the bill that the financial apocalypse inpart caused by Shenmue and the Dreamcasts demise. Whatever you think of Sega Sammy now, It's perfectly understandable that they would be reluctant about giving Yu/Biscay(whoever he is)/Sony the rights to Shenmue III. It's their IP, and it's commercial failure ultimately cost Sega billions.