Tight race between "Shenmue 3 trailer & HD remasters" and "Shenmue 3 trailer, no HD remasters".
I'll repost this as a reminder (posted on Twitter on April 2nd 2017):
"There is activity around the Shenmue franchise. I don't have enough info to tell more about it at the moment but it looks positive!"
Romain Mahut works as journalist for french gaming website (second most popular in France, behind Gamekult) Gameblog and is also known to be a huge Shenmue fan.
Yea I am putting together something, with other ideas flying about. There will be a megastream on the day, that's more or less locked in. But there may or may not be a stream in each of the nights from the Thursday before E3, right through until the Monday night itself.
Peter wrote: Yea I am putting together something, with other ideas flying about. There will be a megastream on the day, that's more or less locked in. But there may or may not be a stream in each of the nights from the Thursday before E3, right through until the Monday night itself.
Sounds good Peter. Will be there with you guys on the night eagerly awaiting.
We're into crunch time now. If anything is coming, they are at the last month to grind hard and put something together.
I feel vindication is on the horizon for Shenmue fans at E3. We will have approached the 2 year mark with very little, if any, true substance being revealed. The time is now to capitalize and put it back in the spotlight, especially if it really is a mere 7 months from release(I still doubt that).
Shenmue III's reveal is considered one of E3s greatest moments(even by non fans), so I look for a strong trailer amidst some very heavy hitters by Sony.
FFVII-R has been in development since mid 2014, so I expect both it and Shenmue to be shown, probably in close proximity to each other. Resident Evil 2 Remake has a similar dev timeline since it's confirmation, so it probably shows up too.
The HDs? The rumor mill is getting stronger around those. I think it'd be insane not to have them confirmed, but Sega didn't give two shits about Shenmue until Suzuki and series fans truly voted with their wallet, so it remains to be seen if they'll wipe that egg off and ante up.
I'll go with III only for now. Sega has shown a desire to revive their classics(Bayo on PC), but park their pride enough to make the one package most clamored for? I am not convinced..yet. Let's see what leaks come our way this month.
My hopes are that both Shenmue HD Collection and Shenmue 3 will be shown. I generally think in terms of logic and it would be more logical than not for Sega to at least announce the Shenmue HD Collection on PS4 and PC at this year's E3 on the Sony stage. Granted, Sega hasn't been very logical since the death of Dreamcast.
I see this as the last potential announcement event for the HD Collection for the simple fact that YsNet is saying they are on track for the December 2017 release of the sequel. It's, at the very least, a cash grab just sitting on the table for Sega to scoop up. Many remasters are just that; cash grabs. The difference is that this is definitely one that I could sink my teeth into and say... "Well it's about time".
If Sega doesn't announce an HD Collection at this E3, then I feel that any hopes for the collection to be announced and/or released in the future are gone. This is literally their last chance in my opinion. That said, I feel that 2017 could be the Sega revival that many of us Sega fans have been wanting for a while. Sonic seems to be on track to being great for the first time since Sonic Adventure with not just one but two entries this year. While Sega may not actually be developing or porting Sonic or Shenmue, their logo will be on the box.
As for my other E3 (non-Shenmue) hopes there is really only one other in terms of PS4 and that is a Dino Crisis reboot. All my other hopes for E3 land squarely on Nintendo and many announcements for the Switch. I just got the system with Zelda and Mario Kart for my family and that's really it for games until Mario Odyssey. After Mario Odyssey they have nothing on the horizon that interests me. Here's hoping they come out swinging.
As I said in the past, unless SIII gets delayed, I'm 99% sure we'll see a trailer at E3. That said, I'm not sure about the HD remasters because, considering all the parties involved in the franchise right now, I think it would take some sort of coordination between Sega, Sony and Shibuya Productions to announce them at E3 the proper way. Yet, recently Biscay said this:
First of all, ever since the beginning of the project, this is what we would like to happen. Apparently, it’s something SEGA wants too. It’s only my personal opinion but there’s every chance that SEGA has an interest for those remasters, especially considering all the hype surrounding Shenmue 3. So, I cannot officially confirm the remasters, since I don’t work at SEGA, but it seems logical to me that those games come out eventually. What we would really like to see though, is those games released before Shenmue 3 comes out. This would help us a lot with the marketing but would also bring new players to the Series, because to be fair, start a Saga with the third episode isn’t very cool. If people have played the remasters first, it would be much more fun. (http://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=50681&start=120#p1150246)
TL;DR, he didn't know if Sega was working on the remasters (unless he had to lie to keep the secret...). This was less than a month ago. Sure, Sega could let them know right before E3 or even announce the remasters anyway, but without enough coordination, it may come out as a messy presentation, disjointed from an eventual SIII reveal trailer, so I'd say there's less chance it may happen at this E3.
I'm sure we could gin up a few theories about who is allowed to tell who what to explain why Cedric would be in the dark... but the unfortunate truth would probably be what we've always suspected; SEGA will do their own thing and won't coordinate with YSnet.
Im hoping that Sega are working with Sony on everything Shenmue related, similar to Yakuza. Let Sony handle announcements, marketing etc.
Only a month left. Can't believe it. Im fully expecting Shenmue 3, FF7 and Last of us 2 to dominate Sony's press event. Who knows what else they have in store. Hopefully some more revivals, sequels and localisations.