Pollito Diablo wrote: Shenmue was also unlucky to face the PS2 Monster.
Shenmue was released in Europe the 1st December 2000, and the PS2 was released...one week before, the 24 November 2000.
In the USA, Shenmue was released the 7 November 2000, and the PS2 was released...two weeks before,, the 26 October 2000.
In Japan, Shenmue was released the 29 December 1999 and the PS2 was released the 4th March 2000.
I remember the majority of gamers were waiting for the Playstation 2, i was also trying to convince my friends to trust Sega and his DC and buy Shenmue, but it was almost impossible to change their minds, the media and the players were focused on the PS2.
Other problem was that players don't trust so much Sega after the Mega CD, 32X and Saturn flops.
Very much so. Sega lost a tonne of consumer confidence with the Mega Drive/Genesis add ons & then releasing the Saturn. Lots of people were rightly pissed and it harmed the DC which had arguably one of the strongest game line-ups going at the time. Also the lack of a DVD player in the DC didn't help but cost implications stopped that before the console came out.
Shenmue 1 did well worldwide with 1 million sales so from that perspective it did well but financially it didn't and the release of Shenmue 2 was very quiet in the EU at least so didn't garner much interest. Couple that with the failure to release the series on the most popular platform at the time (PS2, after SEGA left the market) pretty much killed it from a business viability standpoint. Not the games fault but a series of poor business decisions more than anything. There is the argument the PS2 may have struggled with Shenmue in terms of performance but I'll let more informed people than me conclude on that!