“We saw the talk surrounding the announcement of Shenmue III, and we saw the demand for that game,” [John Clark, Sega Europe’s executive vice president of publishing] told IGN Japan at Tokyo event Sega Fes 2018. “(Ports of) Shenmue I & II had been a discussion pre Shenmue III, but I think that it all helped raise the awareness internally and externally,” giving Sega Europe’s team the leverage it needed to push the project forward.
That said, Clark believes the re-releases would have happened eventually even without the existence of Shenmue III, citing a general increase in global appetite for Japanese games, and for classic Sega IP.
"We have a wishlist [for most-wanted re-releases], and one of the first games that we brought out [from that list] was Valkyria Chronicles. That came out on PC, and the appetite for that game on PC led to it coming out on console as well, and now we see that the franchise is becoming really healthy.” Indeed, a Western release of Valkyria Chronicles 4 is due this fall on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
“That triggered renewed interest in the West for [Sega’s] Japanese titles, and they started to go to a bigger audience in the West than they had, say, 10 years or 15 years ago,” continued Clark. “It was encouraging for us and for Sega in Japan to see that. I think that influenced and gave us leverage on the kind of titles we could bring out, titles like Shenmue.”
http://au.ign.com/articles/2018/04/19/s ... nouncement
