We have no idea how much Sega charge for licensing the Shenmue IP (or any of their other IPs, for that matter). I’d be very surprised if it’s anywhere near 10 or 20% (1 or 2% seem much more likely, or a flat up-front fee), but given how tight the margins are on 500,000 sales, any prospective publisher should be targeting at least 550,000 - 600,000 sales to account for this and all of the other expenses.
We don't have data, but usually licensing fees can be around 5%, of course it can be lower or higher, it depends on what IP you are licensing (Space channel 5, Panzer Dragoon and Streets of rage will not cost the same as the Sonic license for example).
And Yu received even a favor price for Shenmue (he probably got it
almost free at a symbolic price, Instead I remember Yu mentioning Sega asking real money to include classic Sega arcades in-game, so he gave up on the idea), so I don't think Sega license fees impacted much if not at all.
There is no evidence to suggest that Shenmue 3 sold anywhere near 300k-500k copies at full price. In fact, quite the contrary. What little data we do have suggests that Shenmue 3 sold between 50k-100k in its first week. It was heavily discounted almost immediately after that (iirc you could get it for $30 in Walmart a little over one week after it’s release), so any further sales were not at full price.
We made some estimate back then.
Also Deep Silver said "it sold fine", and 100k aren't fine at all for a AA game, even after the Epic Games deal.
So we are looking at 250-300k minimum, of course Deep Silver expected a lot more given the kickstarter success, but they should've also recognized their awful marketing job during that famous press conference...
As I said before, even Yakuza games in the past profited with less than 400k, and yakuza games also lower the retail price after few months.
Streets of Rage absolutely had an active fanbase before the series was revived, but even if it didn’t, so what? You’re comparing a critically acclaimed beat ‘em up to a narrative driven RPG that got mixed reviews and was disliked by a fairly significant portion of the fanbase. Better to compare Shenmue 3 to one of the thousands of other games that fails to sell 500,000 copies every year; full priced or otherwise.
I'm simply comparing two Sega licensed (previously) dormant IPs.
Even if we want to make a comparison to some random games who underperforms, I can't remember right now a japanese single player AA game on PS4 that sold less than 500k...
You remind me of somebody I know who was convinced that selling 1 million copies of a game at full price was easy. He managed to convince some investors of this too (they were investors from outside of the gaming industry who didn’t know any better and were suckered in by the talk of huge RoI) and was able to raise over $20m to make his game. When it finally arrived (over budget, because they had to delay it by five months), it reviewed poorly and sold fewer than 100,000 copies, which led to him being forced out of his own company and losing ownership of all of the IP that he’d spent almost a full decade developing.
He learned the hard way that selling 1 million copies (or 500,000, for that matter) is far from easy. You can cherry pick examples all you like, but the reality is, for every game that manages to sell 500,000 copies, there are 50+ that don’t. You may not be able to wrap your head around this, but publishers are well aware of it, which is why finding one willing to risk $10m+ on a third-party franchise with a history of underperforming is going to be incredibly challenging.
Who was this guy?
I never said that selling 500k is easy, but it's easier now compared to the past, given the current market, audience, word of mouth and socials (that are a double edge blade), especially compared to the PS3/360 generation where AA games had no space on the market.
Publishers of course play safe, the challenge is to find a decent one, like Sega was in the past (and sometimes it is even roday).
But we are looking at Sega or for new publishers with no name, where existing IPs can really help them compared to create a brand new IP (that's why 110 industries teases were credible).
I'm sure Yu will find one.