Tomato Convenience Store wrote: joka wrote: It was pretty obvious Sony were involved behind the scenes in this... One question is if they're THAT involved whys there no physical ps4 copy planned?
If it smashes it's stretch targets I'm sure that'll get revised anyway but seems odd...
I think the days of Shenmue III being considered a AAA franchise are done, so I'm not sure if a physical release would make sense given how many unit sales are typically expected of a boxed product. I know the kickstarter is a huge success, but I would imagine it would have to get a crazy amount of money from kickstarter to get consideration for release as a boxed product. Plus, Sony could even have a limit on how much they want to invest in the game (risk), even with the kickstarter money. It might be budgeted to be a mid-tier downloadable game, or episodic, or who knows.
And with my AAA comment, I just mean that it's not going to be at the top of the class regarding tech like it was during the dreamcast days. I have no doubt that even without a huge budget, they'll still be able to deliver a real Shenmue experience.
What's really great about this is, in addition to funding, they'll probably get some of Sony's support with QA, production, and possibly audio/VO/Music.
I completely agree with you, Shenmue 3 realistically is not going to be the AAA title it's predecessors were. I think that's primarily down to an age/time thing. The reason why Shenmue 1 and 2 were AAA titles were because they had a big budget, great storyline that was set in a living, breathing world with changing weather effects, NPCs going about their daily routines, the ability to play in a sandbox environment all with stunning graphics. Back then, there were very few games like that.
However, fast-forward to 2015; we find that what made Shenmue so unique about 14-15 years ago is not so unique now. There are now MANY games out there which model themselves on having a living breathing world with great graphics and a focus on storyline. Think of games like GTA, Elder Scrolls, The Witcher; all of these use very similar elements to what made the first Shenmue so revolutionary.
I think that's why it's very difficult for Shenmue 3 to be a AAA title, not because it's any less of a game (it's still going to be AMAZING), but the fact that it wont be as ground-breaking because other games are using similar gameplay, storyline and environment principles that Shenmue first used all those years ago.
Shenmue laid the foundations to a fully interactive gaming environment, that's why it's so special, because it started all of this.