Yokosuka wrote: Not necessarily environments part indeed but we're talking about Yu Suzuki after all (although it's common for every gaming studios) :
- the characters of Virtua Racing purposely made to be reused in Virtua Fighter 1
- the Virtua Fighter 2 engine in Shenmue 1 & 2
- The technological influence of Shenmue in Virtua Fighter 4
- Magic Weather in Ferrari F355 Challenge
- all other software or office technologies developments shared by AM2 games
So we can fairly expect unexpected long-term purposes from him. Somehow, YSnet is already working on a next-gen version of Shenmue as they are producing a PC version. Didn't Cédric say that the PC version will be "optimized" compared with the PS4 version ?
Perhaps Yu will also cover another game development like he did for Ferrari F355 Challenge for fun and avoiding the stress from Shenmue hell development as he talked in Shanghai about creating a new driving game.
While it's true a lot of AM2 games did reuse elements from all over game development, it made more sense to because of the sheer volume of titles coming out of the studio, so I'm not sure YSnet are looking too far ahead with what they're making for Shenmue 3 outside of laying the bricks for building 4 on top of the systems they've got. It'd be nice if Yu got to make a new game between Shenmue 3 and 4, but I think he'll likely want to strike while the iron is hot off the release of 3 and maybe close out his career at the same time as the Shenmue series.
As for the PC version, I wouldn't say that'd be the next-gen version as we have no idea what the specs of the next Xbox or Playstation will be and if they'll be anywhere near a current high-end PC, but it would be a great testing ground for the upper limits of what they can do in UE4. I'm expecting a better draw distance, texture filtering, shadows, ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing in the PC version of Shenmue 3, but at the end of the day it'll still not be a generational head and shoulders leap over the PS4 version.