Monkei wrote: Supa wrote: More than likely. ^
Also, SEGA released an official Shenmue shirt a year or two back, let Ryo be in All - Stars Racing and All - Stars Racing Transformed, put Ryo's jacket on Xbox Live for purchase to put on an avatar, licensed a Ryo and a Lan Di statue for First 4 Figures, licensed a Ryo jacket for production by Insert Coin, licensed an art print recently by that guy who has been doing SEGA art prints, licensed the soundtrack to be remastered and pressed on vinyl recently, released this official ringtone...and...oh yeah, just handed the rights to Shenmue III over to Yu Suzuki. Presumably, they'd let him do whatever he wanted to with Shenmue. Remember, Ys Net also made Shenmue Gai, with SEGA's permission.
While you might be right and I really don't mean to read too much into nothing here, I still think this is something different. Ryo's jacket on Xbox live was a by-product of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. So we probably have to thank Sumo Digital for that. I can't imagine SEGA actually telling them to put Shenmue stuff into and around the game. And the official shirt you're talking about.. doing a quick search, I couldn't find anything that SEGA actually released themselves, only a licensed one by Insert Coin.
Which means that in all those cases you listed, SEGA merely gave permission to use the license (unless I'm wrong about the shirt). Releasing a 20-something second ringtone might be as close to doing nothing as it gets, but it's still
something. The first Shenmue related bit they released totally on their own without anybody else having to ask them "can we put this Shenmue stuff out/into the game/on our shirt/anywhere?"...
Supa wrote:They have been very good to Yu Suzuki and us Shenmue fans in the grand scheme of things.
Can't really say I agree, especially not the fans-part. Granted, handing Yu the license to continue the saga was a fair move. But in the grand scheme of things they never gave much of a damn about Shenmue, and they didn't even try to look like they did. What they did was minimal, and it never happened by their own motivation.
T shirt:
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=46832Fans like to say that "x company doesn't care about us", when in reality, business is a lot harder than most know it all fans seem to think. There are conflicting figures as to what Shenmue actually cost. We've heard $70 million, $47 million, and $20 million. If we tookt he cheapest of those prices, it still held the record for the most expensive game ever made for years. Due to circumstances ALONE, Shenmue never had a chance. It started life on a dying console that was riddled with mistakes at the corporate level (Saturn), and then remade for the Dreamcast, a console with short lived success. SEGA POURED money into the project, and pretty much gave Yu Suzuki a blank check. Did he deliver? Absolutely. But the game only sold 1.2 million copies worldwide. Shenmue I & II were in development as one game, so as soon as it was known that they wouldn't meet release dates by including the entire game, Shenmue was split into the two games we have come to treasure: Shenmue I and Shenmue II. Shenmue II was the beginning of the franchise's trouble. It was still a remarkable game, but was released on a dying console (Dreamcast), and then picked up by an exclusive in North America by Microsoft for the Xbox. In hindsight, this was a mistake as the announcement only came that the NA Dreamcast Shenmue II was cancelled, and American gamers started importing, making Shenmue II one of the most imported games of all time as well, if I remember reading correctly. Then, by the time Shenmue IIx was FINALLY announced, there was not a lot of interest from Shenmue fans, or at least not as much as there could have been, because a lot of them already had the game. Shenmue The Movie and the included Digest Movie didn't fulfill their purpose in bringing in new gamers to the franchise, as Shenmue IIx did not sell very well at all. Like, less than 200,000 copies I think. Combined with the Shenmue II DC sales, and the rerelease it got in Japan, the game didn't sell well across the board.
Enter Shenmue Online. It started development in early 2003, and as of now remains unreleased, and was quietly shelved. SEGA almost had to go to court against the main developer JCE. They settled out of court, and Yu was allowed to continue development. It still had many troubles, so it was quietly shelved sometime in 2007, we guess. The game had a budget of almost $30 million, and all of that was wasted.
Shenmue Gai debuted in late 2010, and also was unsuccessful. SEGA allowed Ys Net to use everything Shenmue to make this game, and it didn't do well at all. Meanwhile, they continue to license merchandise, and give tiny fan services now and again, as I mentioned in my previous post.
It is so easy to say "SEGA doesn't care, SEGA doesn't care...I would have LOVED for them to give Yu a blank check to release Shenmue Online, Shenmue Gai, and Shenmue I, II, III, IV, and V in complete mega package, but how much money have they lost on this series already, and how many risks have they taken? The entire Shenmue project had an unprecedented scope in the industry.
For the history they have had, I still believe they've been very kind to Yu Suzuki and us.
Look at the timeline:
November 27th, 1998 - Virtua Fighter 3tb released in Japan, packaged with a special Project Berkely demo disc.
December 20th, 1998 - Shenmue Premiere held in Japan.
December 29th, 1999 - Shenmue I released for the SEGA Dreamcast in Japan.
November 8th, 2000 - Shenmue I released for the SEGA Dreamcast in North America.
December 1st, 2000 - Shenmue I released for the SEGA Dreamcast in Europe.
January 20th, 2001 - Shenmue The Movie debuts in Japanese movie theaters.
July 5th, 2001 - US Shenmue is released for the SEGA Dreamcast in Japan.
September 6th, 2001 - Shenmue II released for the SEGA Dreamcast in Japan.
November 13th, 2001 - SEGA Europe confirms Shenmue III is in development on their website.
November 23rd, 2001 - Shenmue II released for the SEGA Dreamcast in Europe.
December 21st, 2001 - Shenmue The Movie released on DVD in Japan.
April 1st, 2002 - All online features in the Shenmue I Passport are discontinued through all regions.
October 28th, 2002 - Shenmue II released for the Microsoft Xbox in North America.
February 2003 - Development starts on Shenmue Online.
March 6th, 2003 - Shenmue II Dorikore version released on SEGA Dreamcast as a budget release in Japan.
March 21st, 2003 - Shenmue II released for the Microsoft Xbox in Europe.
August 3rd, 2004 - SEGA of Japan, JCE, and T2 jointly announce Shenmue Online,
http://www.shenmue-online.com/ and
http://shenmue.joycity.com/ open.
September 17th, 2004 - During a Korean press conference, it is said that releases of Shenmue Online in Japan, North America, Europe, and Taiwan are being looked into.
September 24th, 2004 - At Tokyo Games Show 2004, SEGA says that they are looking to start service in Japan by the end of 2005.
July 28th, 2006: Shenmue Online shown at China Joy expo.
September 17th, 2008 - Yu Suzuki responds to questions about Shenmue Online: “Due to a situation, the project is in a “pending” state. But personally, I’m hoping to be reunited with Shenmue Online. I haven’t given up.”
September 21st, 2010 – Shenmue Gai open beta begins on Yahoo! Japan and Japanese phone carrier DeNA's Yahoo! Mobage network.
October 7th, 2010 - Shenmue Gai is announced for PC.
December 26th, 2011 - Support for Shenmue Gai ceases.
June 15th, 2015 - Shenmue III announced for Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows via Kickstarter.
As I said, ideally, SEGA would fund every Shenmue venture Yu wanted, and then some. But given what Shenmue did to the company financially (no matter how circumstantial), they have been incredibly generous with letting Yu do pretty much whatever he wanted to with the franchise, if he could fund it. This is almost as unprecedented in the industry as Shenmue's original scope and budget. And whether we like to admit or not, the longest time the community has had
zero news about a Shenmue game has been either the four years between Shenmue Online being shown at China Joy and the Shenmue Gai Premiere, or Shenmue Gai ending and Shenmue III being announced. Probably the latter, as I'm sure we got some news and screenshots after the China Joy presentation. It's not the games we may have wanted, but it is the hard truth.
