Shenmue Dojo

Imagine, if you will, a giant list. Maybe it's an Excel file. Or on a whiteboard somewhere in Sony's offices. Maybe it's written on index cards.

On that list is a ton of names that Sony has been compiling based on fan tweets and requests for three months now. Final Fantasy Type-0 is on there. So is Yakuza. And Shenmue. And many, many others, compiled when Sony's Giovanni Corsi started asking fans to submit requests.

Sony's goal: to bring as many of those games as possible to PlayStation platforms and, if they were never released outside of Japan, to bring those games West.

Schreier: With the caveat that this is all up in the air, this is all in negotiations, are there any that you guys have in mind that you would really like to bring over here?

Boyes: I think a lot—we get a ton of requests for Yakuza, a ton of requests for Shenmue. We see the lists. Like everything that people have tweeted Gio, literally we have a person that compiles those lists and prioritizes based on how many requests we've gotten. And I think to date there's well over 10,000 mentions across like forum threads and stuff like that. So those are the ones we're focused on

Schreier: That's good to hear. When you say that you're targeting games in Japan, you mentioned Yakuza, you mentioned Shenmue—those are older games. Are you looking at PSP games? Are you looking at PS3 games?

Boyes: You could imagine that every piece of content that's come to those platforms over in Japan, we're looking at bringing over. It's also a balance of like, is it gonna be commercially viable if there isn't some sort of HD remix, should it come just as the native version, should we port it up? And so those are conversations, again—I worked at Capcom, now I work with Sony, so this is my second Japanese company. It's about trust. And it takes a long time to have those conversations and make sure everyone feels comfortable, especially 'cause it's like, we haven't released it before in America, how's it gonna do and stuff like that.

So it's a long process. But I'm very hopeful. The whole reason we started the group is to bring great content that you love back over here.

Riku Rose wrote:Boyes: You could imagine that every piece of content that's come to those platforms over in Japan, we're looking at bringing over. It's also a balance of like, is it gonna be commercially viable if there isn't some sort of HD remix, should it come just as the native version, should we port it up? And so those are conversations.

Axm wrote: We probably should actually include that with every tweet for #giveyutheshenmuelicence... Whats it gonna hurt right? I wouldnt mind if it was completely striped from Sega's hands at this point. Just make the damn games.