i saw on eurogamer that star citizen just passed $100 million funding, which is just insane. they built up huge hype for their game by making more and more promises, ever increasing the games scope which seems to have encouraged ever more backers. i wonder if Cedric/ Ys Net have a similar plan? obviously it would never be at the level of star citizen, but it could possibly get a few additional million .
what if they start emphasizing the prospect of a living, breathing open world, create an amazing tech demo of one of the villages showing the world's possible depth and detail, with advanced npc schedules, dynamic interactions, all the time and weather simulations up and running. etc -
'greatest open world simulation ever' - kind of an angle... depth over size. insane detail.
would this be enough to attract new backers? there must be some angle they could find which would capture peoples imaginations and commit them to invest in the vision.
the problem is whether or not a fully realized Shenmue (imagine shemue 3 with a 60 million+ budget!) has any kind of general appeal, rather than just a niche appeal ( the fans of the originals). it could be that a spaceship mmo will always have more appeal.
there are problems with extending the funding campaign, like the increased likelihood of delays, but the game could be very much richer for it.
Yu Suzuki is an old school developer, so perhaps he would not relish the prospect of having to deal with constantly adjusting and adding to the game as the budget increases.
really curious as to whether the delays in the upgrades and absence of the pc version are because they want to extend the funding campaign. obviously it would be nice if its because they found investment from elsewhere, but its just a mystery at the moment.
Shenmue 3 is up and running now, so as more screenshots and footage is shown more people might want to jump on the bandwagon anyway, so leaving funding open for another year could be sensible.
also if s1 and s2 HD happen then the additional fans this could create might want to invest in shenmue 3 as well.
some interesting links about star citizen;
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015- ... 0-launcheshttp://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10 ... roversial/