Why kickstarter to make S4? What about SEGA?

[Niaxi]

I suppose involvement from Sega in Shenmue 4 would at least raise the possibility of using Sega IP's for capsule toys again, maybe even the inclusion of the old Yu Suzuki games.

 

[Tomato Convenience Store]

I feel the Shenmue 1 and 2 re-release sales might be a bigger factor for Sega publishing Shenmue 4 than we realize. 16-17 years later they sold more than 300k physical copies*, let alone adding digital sales on consoles, PC, gamepass. That's about the same number of physical copies of Shenmue II on xbox, and with digital sales it has to have outsold it pretty significantly. I would guess it possibly even outsold the Shenmue II sales combined on xbox/DC (~470k)

While of course the Shenmue 3 sales would be a huge factor, Sega could feel they could market Shenmue 4 better and that the game can outsell 3. Yes, there's always a concern about trying to get in a new audience who haven't played the games, but all that matters is the game is good, reviews well, shows well in trailers and quick looks, etc. I don't think it's that uncommon for sequels to sell better than prior games in a series, even if they're story driven.

*Don't have any official data, just going by vgchartz to be fair. Sales are also about 4:1 PS4:Xbone, so part of me is wondering what would have happened to the series if it continued on PlayStation 2 and further.

 

[jsh020]

I feel like sega isn't gonna come close to putting any substantial effort or money into shenmue let alone getting involved with 4. I think the absolute most we can hope for is lending the rights to some properties to use in arcades or something. I just don't see why Sega would ever see an appeal in coming back, they can shit out an hd collection that they outsourced and be happy with those sales, but that cause its a low risk high reward scenario where they are just making money off a pre-existing work. Actually fronting funding to something like 4 and assisting with it? I'd have to believe that to see it, I think if they really were ever gonna do that we would see far more movement on that front.

If Shenmue sells 'enough,' then it's just a way to make some decent money without a lot of risk. I think Yakuza sells 'enough' and that's why they keep pumping them out. If Shenmue 3 moves decent numbers, it's probably safe to say Shenmue 4 will as well. At that point, we'll see if it's Sega or Deep Silver picking up the tab.

I think at this point, like it or not, shenmue's future rests on deep silver and whether they want to still roll with it, thats semi reassuring in a way cause THQ just picks up any old dead property and rolls with it so their standard might not be too high, but that leads me to worry that we might just see 4 be an even lower budget compromised vision than 3 was.

 

[Sput Vas Normandy]

What about asking to Sega's twitter? I mean not ask them to do S4 because we don't know what YS wants, maybe he doesn't wants Sega to be involved. Just ask "would you be interested in doing S4 with YS?". A few times thanks to asking Sega's twitter we got a bit of information about Yakuza a few months ago. We could try that.

 

[darksniper]

If Sega was willing to shell out money to have a team remake Shenmue I and II from the ground up, it's very possible they are willing to be all in on IV. Im optimistic of our chances.

 

[Tomato Convenience Store]

If Sega was willing to shell out money to have a team remake Shenmue I and II from the ground up, it's very possible they are willing to be all in on IV. Im optimistic of our chances.

And who knows, maybe they still go ahead with that plan? For all we know, they wanted the games out before Shenmue III and thought it would take too much time to develop them properly, which is why we got the dreamcast ports.

I like to think I stay relatively grounded and realistic about things, especially after being here for the Shenmue II launch and getting my hopes up about rumors of Shenmue III for a few years afterwards. I just think Sega's failure as a console maker is the biggest (but not only) issue for how the series struggled. Now that that's in the past and Sega is third party, funding a proper Shenmue IV from the get go and releasing it on PS5/Xbox/PC could be a relative success.

 

[Tosh]

If Sega was willing to shell out money to have a team remake Shenmue I and II from the ground up, it's very possible they are willing to be all in on IV. Im optimistic of our chances.

Well, they looked into it and then said no.
I think Sega is happy that the Yakuza franchise finally made it into the western market
and the numbers even exceed their expectations. It seems like they will put more heart into that series.
I mean all of a sudden they even do english voices and other european text languages
(Yakuza games are extremely text and voice heavy,
the translation is way too expensive just for testing, so thats a huge decision)
and the difference of the release window between the japanese and western version is just +/- 6 months,
thats a completely new step for Sega and it took forever to get on this level.

I think all of their confidence is in that series right now, not in Shenmue.
Yakuza 6 had the biggest start in the west of all Yakuza games and Judgment made more money
than Sega expected, Yakuza 7 is already in the works and probably Judgment 2 ... the Yakuza franchise has a run right now.
All of the latest Yakuza games and spin offs have a metascore of at least 80 or more.
I doubt that they will now also boost Shenmue with their own money, they dont lose anything if they dont do it
and they treated the IP extremely cautious since Shenmue 2. They only said yes to Yu Suzukis Shenmue 3 idea
because Suzuki agreed to their conditions that they wont give him any money for Shenmue 3
and he has to do it on his own. And now all of a sudden Sega will give him 15 mil or whatever for Shenmue 4? Why?
I'm not betting any money on Sega.

 

[Budgiecat]

Hence why I suggested that they make some sort of goodwill gesture towards the fans. If they were to come out and say something like, 'we're going to back Shenmue 4, let Yu-san make the game he wants and not insist on things like microtransactions or that he release it on sedate without fail, ' then I would be more inclined to welcome their support. Or a commitment to back Shenmue 4&5 might do the trick.

I'd be down with some Season Pass SEGA classic arcade titles.

Like you know how those 'Universal Upright Arcade Cabinets' in the arcades say "Coming Soon" on them, meanwhile there's posters of Space Harrier, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Fighter 3?

Well just like how SEGA was willing to hand over their VF assets to Koei Tecmo for their DLC addition of VF characters implemented into Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate, so could they hypothetically give over those three games and just code them into those cabinets.
Would be kinda cool since the whole 'coming soon' would come to fruition, and it since it would be DLC, it wouldnt take much effort on SEGA's part as it didnt for them with Dead or Alive; they'd just hand over the roms and Ys Net would take care of the rest. Outrun and Hang On would obviously take more work though because they'd have to render new cabinets.

This would definitely (in addition to previously giving Yu Suzuki the Shenmue III license as well as finally remastering Shenmue 1 & 2 which no doubt probably helped build hype for this game) create more public attention of good will for SEGA and then as you said that could lead into them saying 'we will help with Shenmue IV' (even though at this point that still seems like a dream).

Lastly, and this is just my opinion but I know some would scoff at this idea:

I would add some Virtua Fighter characters as guest cameos to fight in the DLC season pass fighting tournament. These would be the highest tier fighters at the end of the tournament. Maybe I would not even include the original cast and only the newer ones like Brad, Goh, Eileen, etc.

 

[Budgiecat]

Well, they looked into it and then said no.
I think Sega is happy that the Yakuza franchise finally made it into the western market
and the numbers even exceed their expectations. It seems like they will put more heart into that series.
I mean all of a sudden they even do english voices and other european text languages
(Yakuza games are extremely text and voice heavy,
the translation is way too expensive just for testing, so thats a huge decision)
and the difference of the release window between the japanese and western version is just +/- 6 months,
thats a completely new step for Sega and it took forever to get on this level.

I think all of their confidence is in that series right now, not in Shenmue.
Yakuza 6 had the biggest start in the west of all Yakuza games and Judgment made more money
than Sega expected, Yakuza 7 is already in the works and probably Judgment 2 ... the Yakuza franchise has a run right now.
All of the latest Yakuza games and spin offs have a metascore of at least 80 or more.
I doubt that they will now also boost Shenmue with their own money, they dont lose anything if they dont do it
and they treated the IP extremely cautious since Shenmue 2. They only said yes to Yu Suzukis Shenmue 3 idea
because Suzuki agreed to their conditions that they wont give him any money for Shenmue 3
and he has to do it on his own. And now all of a sudden Sega will give him 15 mil or whatever for Shenmue 4? Why?
I'm not betting any money on Sega.

Yakuza sales in Japan have been in a decline ever since after Yakuza 5 though.
I think the highest a Yakuza title ever did was around 500k, but its been less and less over the years.
No Yakuza game has ever surpassed Shenmue 1's 1.2 million sale mark.
So yes the global sales have helped them but not crazily enough to make them go wow or anything.
Else, titles like Yakuza Ishin and Yakuza Kenzan! would have been localized/ported already.


One thing to remember also: from the start, Yakuza series always cut more corners than Shenmue.
Even after their huge graphical leap into the HD era.
For one thing, their games are never fully voiced like Shenmue is. Only Yakuza 6 was. Yakuza 7 wont be.
Aslo, the world does not have the crazy level of detail Shenmue has since its focus is more beat em up oriented.
Yakuza 6 with the Dragon Engine tried to take it to a higher level but even that still had environments were still not as interactive despite some good improvements in that regard.
The original Yakuza, while it cost 20 million to make, had fixed camera angles similar to Resident Evil series.
Many stores were not able to enter. Graphics obviously were not as good.
It was when they did the jump to PS3 and Yakuza Kenzan! came out, followed by Yakuza 3, that we started to see them pump up the series more.
And of course since the games were almost a yearly affair, assets were reused.
Hell they even reuse assets for Judgement which was supposed to be a new IP.

And so, back in 2004 or so, you have to ask why would Sega take such a wild bet on Yakuza, which looked very similar to Shenmue in some ways, with 20 million dollars, just one year after their merge with Sammy Studios, a pachinko company with a very conservative tight business model when it came to video games (ones I remember them doing were Spy Fiction, Berserk, and publishing the Guilt Gear series for Arc System Works on PS2)

Sega's reached, or had reached a state over the years, where they really had not much to show for themselves since the merge with Sammy Studios, and I remember reading an article where Sammy looked over the P&L yearly sheets of Sega since they acquired them and were really not impressed with the Sega side of the business; questioning was it really worth it purchasing them.
This might be why they later acquired Atlus soon after I read that. To pick up the slack. Because Sega abandoned a lot of their IPs and talent staff.
You can only make so many bad Sonic games and the public starts thinking your company is a joke.
So its clear that in recent times, Sega has been trying to rebrand themselves and a lot of that has to do with like I said before, new leadership, new goals, and bringing back older IPs.

So who knows

 

[Budgiecat]

Maybe Coke U.S.A didn't like the offer of money with Sega ("give you money to put it in a weirdo game created by a japanese guy in a console that is dead? Wtf dude I know we are Coke and we have money but we are not making charity") and they just take it off the game.

I mean that sounds possible but 'weirdo game?'. I dunno if anyone would have thought that back in 1999 when viewing said game which looked above and beyond anything around it.
And yeah, I do know that these major companies operate at times individually region wise; is why Fighting Vipers in Japan for Saturn featured Pepsiman, but the U.S. version didn't (as well as the fact the Pepsiman game was never localized) because Pepsiman wasn't a thing in the West. But its still odd to me that Coca Cola didnt allow it but Timex did.

 

[Truck_1_0_1_]

Yakuza sales in Japan have been in a decline ever since after Yakuza 5 though.
I think the highest a Yakuza title ever did was around 500k, but its been less and less over the years.
So yes the global sales have helped them but not crazily enough to make them go wow or anything.
Else, titles like Yakuza Ishin and Yakuza Kenzan! would have been localized/ported already.


One thing to remember also: from the start, Yakuza series always cut more corners than Shenmue.
Even after their huge graphical leap into the HD era.
For one thing, their games are never fully voiced like Shenmue is.
Another, the world does not have the crazy level of detail Shenmue has since its focus is more beat em up oriented.
Yakuza 6 with the Dragon Engine tried to take it to a higher level but even that still had text only scenes still, and environments were still not as interactive despite some good improvements in that regard.
The original Yakuza, while it cost 20 million to make, had fixed camera angles similar to Resident Evil series.
Many stores were not able to enter. Graphics obviously were not as good.
It was when they did the jump to PS3 and Yakuza Kenzan! came out, followed by Yakuza 3, that we started to see them pump up the series more.
And of course since the games were almost a yearly affair, assets were reused.
Hell they even reuse assets for Judgement which was supposed to be a new IP.

And so, back in 2004 or so, you have to ask why would Sega take such a wild bet on Yakuza, which looked very similar to Shenmue in some ways, with 20 million dollars, just one year after their merge with Sammy Studios, a pachinko company with a very conservative tight business model when it came to video games (ones I remember them doing were Spy Fiction, Berserk, and publishing the Guilt Gear series for Arc System Works on PS2)

Sega's reached, or had reached a state over the years, where they really had not much to show for themselves since the merge with Sammy Studios, and I remember reading an article where Sammy looked over the P&L yearly sheets of Sega since they acquired them and were really not impressed with the Sega side of the business; questioning was it really worth it purchasing them.
This might be why they later acquired Atlus soon after I read that. To pick up the slack. Because Sega abandoned a lot of their IPs and talent staff.
You can only make so many bad Sonic games and the public starts thinking your company is a joke.
So its clear that in recent times, Sega has been trying to rebrand themselves and a lot of that has to do with like I said before, new leadership, new goals, and bringing back older IPs.

So who knows

6 is fully voiced.

They don't cut corners.

Judge Eyes is not a new IP, its a spinoff.

Don't bash the series; its a phenomenal series with quality AAA title, after quality AAA title.

They can stand equal to Shenmue.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

6 is fully voiced.

They don't cut corners.

Judge Eyes is not a new IP, its a spinoff.

Don't bash the series; its a phenomenal series with quality AAA title, after quality AAA title.

They can stand equal to Shenmue.

For sure.

 

[Budgiecat]

6 is fully voiced.

They don't cut corners.

Judge Eyes is not a new IP, its a spinoff.

Don't bash the series; its a phenomenal series with quality AAA title, after quality AAA title.

They can stand equal to Shenmue.

Well the games that came before Yakuza 6 certainly were definitely not fully voiced, so one game being the exception to the rule doesn't mean 'they don't cut corners'.
When Yakuza 1 first came out in 2005, they most certainly did not take as ambitious as an approach to making a realized depiction of Japan. The camera was locked as per RE style instead of fully open like Shenmue, most of the stores were non interactive, and the graphics were not as detailed in terms of environments. This continued into Yakuza 2 until Kenzan! and Yakuza 3 in the HD gen of the seventh gen, went full 3D world. But Yakuza Kenzan! 3,4,5, Dead Souls, Black Panther 1 & 2, Ishin, Zero, and Kiwami 1 were not fully voiced.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Judgement, which came after Yakuza 6, were not fully voiced.

Yakuza 7 is not fully voiced


and like Shenmue 3, they removed drinking animation from cans and bottles that were in Yakuza 6 / Shenmue 1 & 2.

Of course, Yakuza never had weather/day night system mapping real world weather patterns of the year it came out (though each Yakuza game did properly show the season in which the game came out), level of detail in interacting within rooms (not really the point in Yakuza though since your focus isn't on investigating like Shenmue does); nor does Judgement, which is an investigating game, have the same level of investigating items like Shenmue does.

Of course there are many things Yakuza series does that Shenmue doesn't either like taxi driving, idol performance, golf, table tennis, baseball, batting practice, slot car racing (though I think Shenmue 3 might have this in DLC form), use of weapons and the crafting of them (Ryo would never do that anyway), hostess clubs, karaoke, hunting, deep river diving, getting drunk, baby raising, hostess management, etc



Also its not 'bashing' the series in an effort to boost Shenmue. I love the Yakuza series. I'm just being honest about what each series does and what they don't do.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

I wonder how much of a Yakuza game Suzuki has seen. It seems like he doesn’t know much about the games. I’d love to know that he’s spending a little more time studying what other open world games are doing.

 

[Budgiecat]

I wonder how much of a Yakuza game Suzuki has seen. It seems like he doesn’t know much about the games. I’d love to know that he’s spending a little more time studying what other open world games are doing.

Nagoshi worked under him so I assume they're still friends.

Did you see that 64 question video with Yu Suzuki? They asked him if he'd ever consider a Yakuza crossover into Shenmue or vice versa he said no pretty quickly lol. He also said he never played GTA and that he only has seen their trailers.
I remember Nagoshi saying he hates the GTA series but respects its success lol

But in my head canon, Yakuza already crossed over into Shenmue.

In Shenmue 1, when you enter that green door to go up to the gambling room where the Yakuza are, the young long haired guy with the sunglasses that says "if you dont shut the hell up, I'll make you wish you had!" to me is Akira, Kiryu's childhood friend and fellow rookie in the Dojima family.
Inside the gambling room is an older Yakuza guy with a thick head of slicked hair and gold sunglasses with a gruffy voice and a purple leisure suit. To me, that guy is Daisuke Kuze, head lieutenant of the Dojima Yakuza family.
My head canon theory is since Shenmue takes place late 1986 and Yakuza 0 takes place in 1988, those two were there running that division in Yokosuka before they got promoted to Kamarucho

 

[mjqjazzbar]

I have a feeling he's against that kind of collaboration because he wouldn't want his character being involved in the criminal underworld. I also kind of recall Suzuki not being crazy about Fighters Megamix, so maybe it's just the idea of collaborations that doesn't interest him.

It would definitely be great promotion for Shenmue more than it'd be promotion for Yakuza, so I hope he'd reconsider were it a viable option.

 

[darksniper]

I have a feeling he's against that kind of collaboration because he wouldn't want his character being involved in the criminal underworld. I also kind of recall Suzuki not being crazy about Fighters Megamix, so maybe it's just the idea of collaborations that doesn't interest him.

It would definitely be great promotion for Shenmue more than it'd be promotion for Yakuza, so I hope he'd reconsider were it a viable option.

I personally want a Fighter's Megamix 2 with a Shenmue x Yakuza crossover characters so I can beat the shit out of people online who will undoubtedly pick mostly Yakuza characters because they're familiar with the cast. If it ever happened, I'm picking Ren exclusively and beating some respect into them.

Ren vs Majima is a Sega dream match of mine waiting to be realized.

 

[Rakim]

If he's against that kind of stuff I wonder what he thought of Ryo being in that Sega All Stars Racing game.

I want to see Ren make an appearance in another game. Be it Yakuza, Smash, or his own China set Yakuza clone.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

Since Shenmue is Sega’s they could probably do anything they want with the franchise. I think he just isn’t personally interested in working on such a project. I also suspect that Suzuki probably isn't fond of the subject matter in the Yakuza series.

I recall an old interview where he was asked about Fighters Megamix and he gave a pretty dismissive answer and said it wasn’t one of his games.

 

[Budgiecat]

If he's against that kind of stuff I wonder what he thought of Ryo being in that Sega All Stars Racing game.

I want to see Ren make an appearance in another game. Be it Yakuza, Smash, or his own China set Yakuza clone.

He said Sega approached him and asked him for permission to put Ryo in it and he said okay. Yu is still a consultant with Sega.


plus Ryo Hazuki and Akira and Pai from VF were in Project X Zone 2 (along with Kiryu of Yakuza) and Akira was in that Dengeki Bunko fighting game as a boss