by shenmue852 » Tue Jul 21, 2015 7:22 am
It's really unclear, but it will probably sell enough to its own fans to recoup its investment, at least the initial 6 mil. Success beyond that is anybody's guess. Lots of people still don't get Shenmue and like to pick on it but there's more potential for it to find its audience than ever before.
Here's a scenario with math- Yakuza 4 sold 140k units in the US. That was a game with no English dub. PS exclusive.
So assuming that Shenmue has an equivalent or bigger fanbase (probably includes most of Yakuza's fanbase by default) in the US, and also reaches the PC market, expanding its potential sales. Now imagine sells only 100,000 copies at $60 each. That generates about enough revenue to break even, i.e YSNet has 6 million again after spending it on the game. Roughly. Slightly less, actually. And that's with 100k copies sold.
If it sells 200,000 copies at $60 each, it's will have reached profitability- they'll make back the 6 million and have almost another 6 mil.
But even Yakuza 4 sold only 630k copies in Japan.
So if I were to guess, I'd put it at slightly higher numbers, bolstered by PC sales and more exposure/hype because of the legendary wait and record kickstarter. That means, maybe 160-180k in the US. 200-300,000 in Japan (it is a Japanese game) and maybe 120k in EU. That puts 500,000 copies sold worldwide within reach, so maybe it makes 2 times the investment. If it sells as much as Yakuza 4 worldwide (930k) it's going to be extremely profitable, but Yakuza 4 had a much, much much bigger budget.
Either way, unless it actually loses money (sells under 200k worldwide) a fourth game isn't unlikely, but it's not 100% guaranteed either.
If the fans Shenmue III as much as I and II, they could do another fan Kickstarter in 3 or 4 years, and it'll probably raise enough.
So really the biggest factor is how good they make the new game- they were excused for various technical difficulties with the first games- the tank controls were an issue but not as much as the lack of fluidity in scene transitions and some really outdated looking dramatic cutscenes, so they've got some work cut out for them bringing the standards up from 1999 levels. Don't get me wrong, it was god tier for in engine gameplay back then and the mocap was never a problem, it was just some of the stuff would look ba if you weren't accounting for the fact that it's a 15 year old game, and they won't have that excuse with the new one.
I'd recommend they stick with a Japanese dub to avoid ruining it with bad localization- it's a very Asian game anyway, the dub never really fit and for IIx the dub makes the game unplayable. no offense to Corey Marshall.
Last edited by
shenmue852 on Tue Jul 21, 2015 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.