by IveBeenCensored » Wed Feb 04, 2004 12:12 am
Intruder: calm down, i hope ur write, but im not counting on it
Santino: If the game gets great reviews, it will definetly boost sales, but I don't think enough to make up for the increased development budget.
Sonic_Blue : I don't think that is the case at all, even if it is a half ass game, it will still be expensive enough, and I doubt the reason it isn't out now is that hes making a great game, its that Sega can't decide whether to make the game or not
Santino (again): The reasons I don't think great reviews will increase Shenmue are as follows (from another topic I wrote before):
Commercially it failed, no doubt. Why, can such a great game fail. Why did Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio: Future fail commercially? I don't know, but these are my theories as to why Shenmue failed?
1.) not enough people played the first game - Dreamcast failed, and so did Shenmue
2.) People don't want the sequal without playing the first game, so unless Xbox owners had a DC, they probably won't buy Shenmue
3.) Poor marketing - Shenmue 1 and 2 did an awful marketing job in my mind, I've never seen any advertising. Why would SEGA spend 20 - 70 million creating the game, and then not advertise good (at least in North America)?
4.) Its Sega - people are biased against it (look at the great Dreamcast console, look at Jet Grind Radio)
5.) The concept and game looks bad, other than the story, there aren't enough "guns, cars, and blood" to satisfy the gaming public
6.) Its difficult to get a demo that truly captures the game. I guess there was What's Shenmue in Japan, but it could't truly capture Shenmue like most demos can.
7.) Its a new style of game, liek Jet Grind Radio
8.) Poor reviews - most reviews of Shenmue 1 were only average, not prompting people to spend there money on it, Shenmue 2 for Dreamcast reviews were better, but the game had to be imported. Shenmue 2 for Xbox reviews were the worst yet, since it was simply a port of the Dreamcast game with a few added features and the good Japanese voices replaced with the shitty English ones.
9. North American Shenmue not on Dreamcast - the Shenmue fan base had Dreamcast consoles, not Xbox's. Shenmue 2 belonged on the Dreamcast, with a possibility of an Xbox port. Shenmue fans who didn't want to import the game or buy it on Ebay (as I did), and who didn't want to purchase an Xbox, didn't get to play the game. I don't know why they released Shenmue 2 on Xbox in the first place. They didn't use the hardware any better than the Dreamcast and the fan base wasn't on Xbox
However, it was not a complete failure, the sales were respectable, just not in contrast to the development budget. Also, it created the most loyal fan base of any game. And if Shenmue 1 failed so badly, why make a sequal? Also, some of you said Shenmue 3 would be announced by now if the other games didn't fail. Well this is true to a point, Sega's recent financial troubles may have prevented any game that costs so much to develop, even if its prequels did sell well. However, the poor sales of the Shenmue games sure didn't help any
Okay, so my conculsion is that if its a great game, it will be moreso because Yu wants to make a great game for personal and fan satisfaction, not money. Yu will do everything possible to make a great game, but he is not president of Sega, and it isn't entirely up to him.