Shenmue 3 Sales

[DarksideHazuki]

I'll be honest, I don't see Shenmue 3 selling a strong 200k. I want it so bad, but I just don't think it will. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

I think it'll do 200k pretty easily. Looking at some (admittedly sketchy) sales figures for Shenmue I & II from vgchartz: [PS4 sales], [Xbox One Sales] you can see that allegedly shifted 340,000 copies, and that's not even including Steam sales. Of course you have to factor in that this was sold at a lower price point, but it shows there's clearly a sizeable audience.

Ironically I think the controversy the game suffered will end up doing far more good than harm, as it kept Shenmue III in the headlines for months on end, and it's the type of game that most people will either love or hate, so anyone interested in Shenmue that isn't a crazed anti-Epic psycho will have it on their mind.

I think we'll see it do somwhere between 250k-400k, which imo will easily be good enough for us to see a proper Shenmue IV.

 

[ARokitLawnChair]

Dang it. I literally ordered from BestBuy two days ago and paid full price.

Also, isn’t it not a good sign if they’re already doing deep discounts?

Whatever gets people to take the plunge. Honestly the best sales are the digital ones, no middle man.

 

[Try Asking Sumiya San]

Lots of doom and gloom for people around here after having our dream fulfilled, which was considered absolutely impossible until 2015 when it smashed Kickstarter.

Why? What happened to you guys?

I’m enjoying shenmue 3 myself but I think part of it is the negative reception the game is receiving. There seems a lot of people that wanted this game that aren’t happy with it spouting stuff all over the internet .

 

[jsh020]

Yakuza 0, which is by far the most popular in the series, sold 650,000 copies. That's after nearly 5 years, and one of the most established franchises in the genre with the backing of a powerhouse like Sega.

I really don't get why people keep bringing this up like it means anything, yakuza games are significantly lower budget than shenmue 3 is and rely heavily on asset flipping even down to a majority of the games taking place in the same setting, like what they do on such a little budget and how they mask how copy and paste the games are is legitimently impressive, but they arent comparable and spend alot of their resources on just hiring actors with some minigames straight up just being other sega properties (like how judgement's pinball was a ios game made by sega just put into a pinball machine). Realistically a success is generally consider when a product at least makes back double the budget, factoring in that stores and all that get a share of products sold among other expenses in between, 250,000 would only make back the budget in an absolute best case scenario if the game is only 10 million, this is not something that looks good to investors.

I feel like alot of people get hung up on the idea that kickstarter and egs deal make it so its not hard to make back money, but making back money on an absurd handicap isnt the problem here, its about giving investors faith in the brand that if they put in the same amount they can see returns. If the game flops at like a measly 250 thousand then I dont see 4 really happening.

 

[RiGoRmOrTiS]

I think the game will hit somewhere around, 150k in sales, not including Kickstarter numbers. Another Kickstarter would be a bad idea, I hope after the way they handled the last one they don't do another Kickstarter... It'll pull in much less than the last one and game media will be all over that like flies on sh*t.

150k is a pretty dicey number now that there are so many fingers in this pie and deep silver taking a cut of the profits.

What will YSNet be left with and will it be enough for Shenmue IV where it has at least the same or greater budget? It's a big question mark.

I'm loving Shenmue 3 so far.. but I'm sure the hyper critical nature of gamers and games journalism can't have eluded Yu Suzuki now.. it's not like the late 90s/early naughties anymore. While a lot of Shenmues idiosyncrasies are fine with us (and he can kinda get away with it in Shenmue 3) if he's going to self fund 4 (and he should) he will need to make some changes.

If they want to make Shenmue 4 and have it sell they'll need to bring bigger guns next time, namely more financial resources and more skilled development..

 

[Ianpm31]

Well we have to consider PS4 sales world wide and even China. Also take into consideration digital sales in which on PS4 is around a 40-50% digital ratio nowadays and DLC on top of that. Digital pulls in more profit per unit. Still #3 on EGS and will release on Steam next year so there's a lot of info to consider.

Most sales numbers only cover physical sales (digital not included)

Still have a black friday sale to look forward too as it's advertised for $35 at BB. Most people buy 3-4 games during black friday

 

[shadowreaper]

View attachment 5850If anyone wanted to know, the Best Buy deal is active as of right now on the online portal of the site. All you have to do is make a free Best Buy account and the game will automatically be on discount. Gonna pick up my second copy through this method!

I don't see that price now.

 

[DarksideHazuki]

I really don't get why people keep bringing this up like it means anything, yakuza games are significantly lower budget than shenmue 3 is and rely heavily on asset flipping even down to a majority of the games taking place in the same setting, like what they do on such a little budget and how they mask how copy and paste the games are is legitimently impressive, but they arent comparable and spend alot of their resources on just hiring actors, theres.

You think the Yakuza games have a smaller budget than the kickstarted Shenmue 3? I don't know what planet you're living on, but it's not this one. The latest spin-off for Yakuza had an enormous Japanese celebrity as the main character lmao. I have seen nothing regarding the Yakuza games' budgets outside of a post on Shenmuedojo (estimated $30 million) that I have no idea the source of, but if you have a legitimate source for the budgets RGG are working with I'd be interested in seeing it. I would bet my life on it being substantially more than Shenmue 3's budget, even without factoring in that the majority of it has already been paid for directly by the fans.

Realistically a success is generally consider when a product at least makes back double the budget, factoring in that stores and all that get a share of products sold among other expenses in between, 250,000 would only make back the budget in an absolute best case scenario if the game is only 10 million, this is not something that looks good to investors.

Your maths is way off. 250,000 copies sold at an average of $50 a copy would be $12.5 million. Considering $7 million of the game's budget was through kickstarter, that's somewhere between $3 million and $8 million the game needs to make back in post-release sales (assuming a total budget of between $10-$15 million as has been speculated.)

250,000 copies sold would be absolutely solid, and without a doubt guarantee a Shenmue IV.

 

[jsh020]

You think the Yakuza games have a smaller budget than the kickstarted Shenmue 3? I don't know what planet you're living on, but it's not this one. The latest spin-off for Yakuza had an enormous Japanese celebrity as the main character lmao. I have seen nothing regarding the Yakuza games' budgets outside of a post on Shenmuedojo (estimated $30 million) that I have no idea the source of, but if you have a legitimate source for the budgets RGG are working with I'd be interested in seeing it. I would bet my life on it being substantially more than Shenmue 3's budget, even without factoring in that the majority of it has already been paid for directly by the fans.

ok for starters, stop ignoring that making back shenmue 3's budget when it has a massive handicap ISNT THE PROBLEM, its all about getting budget for 4 from new investors. They need to convince them that if they put in the cash they will see a return without any of these handicaps. And Ysnet likley isnt gonna be pocketing any profit from shenmue 3's sales its probably all going to deepsilver and various other producers, YSnet probably got a small cut of the contracted work not any actual revenue from sales itself save a bonus or so if it really does do well and they had that negotiated into the deal.

Secondly, yakuza are games made in a single year most of the time (exceptions being 1, 5, 6 for engine purposes, and judgment which was more due to a stagnated development midway through) and out of them 1 was really the only big budget game in the series as it was from scratch and constantly asked for budget increases to the point where it needed to sell 500,000 copies to make a profit, something Nagoshi staked his career on, this is all chronicled in a great little documentary called forging the dragon by yakuzafan on youtube if you want back up on that. After 1's success the co producer basically dropped the bombshell on the team that if they want to actually stay successful they need to pump out a sequel asap because he learned first hand through jet set radio how fast hype can disappear if you wait too long to make a follow up, and so started the franchises design philosophy of yearly releases at lower budget relying heavily on reused assets both from past games and other sega properties. Like I said before, the games put alot of their budget into advertising through big named actors more than anything as a large part of 1 selling as well as it did was because of the actress who played reina in ps2 yakuza 1 was a popular actress at the time


Yakuza is a shining example of cutting corners and making the most out of low budgets, its absolutely way below shenmue 3's budget. Again theres a massive reason so little of the games are actually original, especially in recent years (0 and up) where the copy and pasting has been taken to a extreme, they arent even bothering to make new animation patterns but have been recycling even some major bosses from past games kiwami being the absolute worst case of this where even its final boss had qte's lifted straight from yakuza 5 and making characters like shimano, major antagonist with multiple fights, just have mr shakedowns animation cycle, actually that one in particular is so noticible in recent games they keep using mr shakedown every chance they get its infuriating and so noticible.


Also the big elephant in the room about yakuza's budget vs shenmues, Yakuza relies heavily on product placement as a source of funding more so than sales, that was a big part of how Nagoshi was able to prevent yakuza 1 from getting canceled when he kept running out of money to make it. Again you can see pretty much every thing I said in that documentary.

 

[DarksideHazuki]

ok for starters, stop ignoring that making back shenmue 3's budget when it has a massive handicap ISNT THE PROBLEM, its all about getting budget for 4 from new investors. and secondly, yakuza are games made in a single year most of the time (exceptions being 1, 5, 6 for engine purposes, and judgment) and out of them 1 was really the only big budget game in the series as it was from scratch and constantly asked for budget increases to the point where it needed to sell 500,000 copies to make a profit, something Nagoshi staked his career on, this is all chronicled in a great little documentary called forging the dragon by yakuzafan on youtube if you want back up on that. After 1's success the co producer basically dropped the bombshell on the team that if they want to actually stay successful they need to pump out a sequel asap because he learned first hand through jet set radio how fast hype can disappear if you wait too long to make a follow up, and so started the franchises design philosophy of yearly releases at lower budget relying heavily on reused assets both from past games and other sega properties. Like I said before, the games put alot of their budget into advertising through big named actors more than anything as a large part of 1 selling as well as it did was because of the actress who played reina in ps2 yakuza 1 was a popular actress at the time


Yakuza is a shining example of cutting corners and making the most out of low budgets, its absolutely way below shenmue 3's budget. Again theres a massive reason so little of the games are actually original, especially in recent years (0 and up) where the copy and pasting has been taken to a extreme, they arent even bothering to make new animation patterns but have been recycling even some major bosses from past games kiwami being the absolute worst case of this where even its final boss had qte's lifted straight from yakuza 5 and making characters like shimano, major antagonist with multiple fights, just have mr shakedowns animation cycle, actually that one in particular is so noticible in recent games they keep using mr shakedown every chance they get its infuriating and so noticible.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on what would constitute success for Shenmue 3 mate, otherwise we'll just end up spinning our wheels.

Do you have a source for the budget of Yakuza 5 / 0 / 6? I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested in how they measure up.

 

[Kdog4sado]

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on what would constitute success for Shenmue 3 mate, otherwise we'll just end up spinning our wheels.

Do you have a source for the budget of Yakuza 5 / 0 / 6? I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested in how they measure up.

So in your opinion, you believe 250k would spell a better chance?

 

[jsh020]

Do you have a source for the budget of Yakuza 5 / 0 / 6? I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested in how they measure up.

They've never outright said budgets outside of 1's which they have released and can google up, 2.4 billion yen (21 million usd) which again you need to consider was solely cause the game went over budget multiple times and nagoshi found ways to wiggle around cancellation, it was said the game's budget more than doubled what was originally meant to be its budget, what we know about the games since is that they have never come close to that original game's budget nor development time.

I think I would have to back peddle on 6's budget though thinking about it just cause of the dragon engine itself, I remember reading 6 didnt make money because of it but thats just because the engine itself was expensive to make less than 6 itself and it was a loss they were intending to make back through multiple games using it which isnt unheard of for games.

 

[Henry Spencer]

Deep Silver are another subsidiary of the same parent group as THQ Nordic, who published Darksiders 3, which sold around 71k when it came out on Steam after people assumed it bombed and shortly after release said "it made back its budget" and considered the game a success. I don't think we need to worry about Shenmue 3's publisher expecting a huge success, especially as if it was being published by SEGA, whose Japan division publishes a lot of niche games nowadays that don't sell well at all like Shining Resonance: Refrain, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and certain Yakuza games.

This isn't the Dreamcast era where SEGA were publishing it and saying that 1 million for Shenmue 1 wasn't enough (there weren't enough Dreamcasts out there in customers hands back then anyway).

 

[DarksideHazuki]

So in your opinion, you believe 250k would spell a better chance?

I think if Shenmue III clears 250k, that would easily be enough for Yu Suzuki and Ysnet to go to Sega and ask for the rights to make Shenmue IV in a similar manner to Shenmue 3, this time purely funded by their current publishers/investors. This, to me, would be a success in and of itself, but I would not be at all surprised if Sega were interested on getting on board in some capacity at this point.

If Shenmue III sells twice that and does at least 500k, I can't see Sega passing up that opportunity. They would absolutely want a piece of that, especially with the huge potential cross-over support from Yakuza fans. They would be absolutely daft to not take Shenmue IV on, and schedule it for release between RGG's next big releases.

 

[jsh020]

Deep Silver are another subsidiary of the same parent group as THQ Nordic, who published Darksiders 3, which sold around 71k when it came out on Steam after people assumed it bombed and shortly after release said "it made back its budget" and considered the game a success. I don't think we need to worry about Shenmue 3's publisher expecting a huge success, especially as if it was being published by SEGA, whose Japan division publishes a lot of niche games nowadays that don't sell well at all like Shining Resonance: Refrain, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz and certain Yakuza games.

This isn't the Dreamcast era where SEGA were publishing it and saying that 1 million for Shenmue 1 wasn't enough (there weren't enough Dreamcasts out there in customers hands back then anyway).

I mean darksiders 3 was something the ceo of THQ outright said only needed 100K copies sold before release to get another game. I legit cannot fathom how small its production budget was.

 

[shadowreaper]

I can’t see how it would sell fewer than 250,000. I mean stranger things and all but...

 

[Henry Spencer]

I mean darksiders 3 was something they outright said only needed 100K copies sold before release to get another game

I don't recall that, just armchair analysts losing their shit about it "bombing" saying Darksiders was dead as a series again at the time. It's easier for game devs to make back money through other avenues nowadays regardless. Hitman 2 "bombed" and IO Interactive are already making the next one. Yakuza series sales have been dropping in Japan for years now and they aren't stopping. I think 4 is inevitable, it's what comes after that's a mystery (or if Suzuki feels pressured into completing the series with 4 or not).

 

[DigitalDuck]

Your maths is way off. 250,000 copies sold at an average of $50 a copy would be $12.5 million. Considering $7 million of the game's budget was through kickstarter, that's somewhere between $3 million and $8 million the game needs to make back in post-release sales (assuming a total budget of between $10-$15 million as has been speculated.)

... in some fantasy world where the developers get 100% of all sales, this is true.

In reality, they're getting ~70% of digital PS4 sales, ~50% of retail PS4 sales, and ~0% of PC sales. They're going to need about 140k PS4 sales alone just to break even (assuming a total budget of $12 million, subtracting the $7 million Kickstarter sales).

Rough estimates and surveys of the PS4 to PC ratio seem to put it at around 4:1, so this equates to about 175k total. Backer copies do not contribute to this requirement.

 

[Try Asking Sumiya San]

I can’t see how it would sell fewer than 250,000. I mean stranger things and all but...

I’m not sure there was only about 69k backers. I’m sure a lot of people that backed the game won’t have bought it again too.
Making the sales of the retail version even lower.

It’s a shame but shenmue 3 has also reviewed quite poorly amongst some big critics. This will put people off buying in. The best sales are early on in a game being out.

I think we would be lucky to get 250k sales.

 

[DarksideHazuki]

... in some fantasy world where the developers get 100% of all sales, this is true.

Not sure where I claimed this, care to help me out with that?

I've factored the cut all parties will be taking into my estimation, so I'm not really sure why you're coming at me with that energy pal.