shredingskin wrote:Axm wrote:People underestimate the popularity of this series alot.
I think it's the other way around, Shenmue fans overestimate the popularity. I study videogame programming in a group of 20 no one has played shenmue, and not even professors (they just know it was a really innovative game, and appears from time to time in the powerpoints).
People KNOW about shenmue because we are a vocal crowd, most people haven't even played shenmue. Even at the time shenmue was a love/hate game.
Let's not create this ecochamber of thinking about shenmue like the most requested game in all history and revered as the best game ever made, it's not. We just yell louder (as a lot of little communities do).
I never said it was even close to being the most requested game of all time, but in my experience online and definitely IRL, i've spoken with many people that have playn the game(s). I've worked in the industry myself in game stores and for a year with Sony in San Diego. The series has a large reach and yes while many were critical of it, ive found alot more of the people that actually played the games to be positive about it and want to see a revival.
But trust me I know its nowhere near the level of popularity like MGS, Mass Effect etc. However, as a huge fan that I am I have tested every competent gamer ive come across in life with Shenmue knowledge and have a pretty good perspective on the situation. Atleast where im from and where ive been, its a pretty popular "throw back" game that gets brought up often enough to warrent my belief something like a kickstarter would be successful.
The proof enough that this is a popular series still can be seen in the monthly tweets. We have a ton of successful outreach in just social networking. Imagine if we had Kotaku, IGN, GS etc running news on a Shenmue kickstarter. I reckon it would be a big deal.
One persons opinions and experience vs anothers but ive been attentive to the series since its conception and not just blowing smoke as im sure you're not either.. but for a kickstarter to be successful we would need a goal to base it off of. So until then this is all conjecture anyways. I'm just more positive about it.
Henry Spencer wrote:Suzuki's development studio is nowhere near big enough for a project like Shenmue 3 (there's only like a few of them there, and their only output has been phone games). He'd have to get SEGA to hire development out to various external studios, no doubt, since it's pretty obvious that SEGA internally don't want to do it or have other projects they are working on. So it's basically the cost of paying whatever external studios would develop the game.
He would definitely need to hire on more people and have it co-developed or have it entirely developed somewhere else with him at the helm. Hopefully not at Sega.
No doubt its an ordeal to get started properly. But also entirely possible and worth it financially imo.