I actually came across a lovely concern this evening. Went to pick up God of War at 9PM at Game Stop. As the dude was ringing me up I asked if they started taking Shenmue I & II preorders yet. He stared at me with a blank look on his face and had no idea what I was talking about. I repeat myself and he still has no clue. Asks how to spell it which I did. It basically hit me this dude is probably 18 - 25ish and has no idea about Shenmue. This game will not be accepted by the masses (hopefully Xmas shopping parents end up randomly picking it up) and some new people will probably enjoy it from all the nostalgia talk Shenmue fans have spoken about throughout the years. In the end, I am just happy we are getting a chance to play these on modern consoles, but am slightly concerned that it'll bring in that many new fans.
Hopefully this HD collection brings new fans and younger gamers aboard, i wanna believe there's more 17 year olds like you who can see the value of these games despite their age and not having the ''shiniest'' visuals or online components.
Jesus guys!! We just got a re-release of the 2 games that we have been waiting 17 years for, we should be happy!!
First of all, everyone knows how terrible gamestop is lol You could go in an ask him about any [insert japanese game here], and he wouldn't know what it was. They will only know about the game closer to release, and once they are actually taking pre-orders/once the marketing buzz beings.
If you go back into the same gamestop once Sega has started their advertisement campaigns etc, and he still doesn't know, well then he probably shouldn't be working there :P
Sega are already blown away by the early reaction to the announcement and I'm sure they have better metrics than we do.
Here in the UK, we have a deals website (where people post all types of deals, gaming, electronics, clothes etc), if people think the deal is good, they can up-vote it, and if they think it is bad, they down-vote it. On the day that Shenmue 1 & 2 pre-orders were released, there were 2 threads that complete blew up!
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/pre-order-shenmue-i-ii-2299-ps4-xbox-one-365games-115player-points-2926638
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/shenmue-i-ii-ps4xbox-one-2285-delivered-preorder-base-2927204
There are comments from people who are fans, people who have never heard of it, people who backed 3 and have never played 1 & 2, the reaction is off the charts and they got up-voted like crazy!
To put it into perspective, they are still in place number 2 and 3 of this whole weeks hottest threads, and combined, would be double the heat of 1st place:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/280458008809701388/436859151562571776/unknown.png
Once Sega starts the information trickle, shows more game play footage, and starts its marketing campaign, I am sure that we (and Sega) are going to be blown away by the buzz and ultimately sales for the games.
Let's be happy that we are getting them :D!
I think you have a point, a lot of people that work at Gamestop may only play western and/or Nintendo games, and other Japanese games as a whole may be completely off their radar.