If i ran a business and paid someone to do a report on my business which made my business look bad, which only had figures from trophy sites and not hard data, then I would ask them to hold fire on that report and certainly not post it and damage my brand by doing so.
Look at mjqs thread on resetera its already got people piling in on the game again.
Nothing good will come of this
Stay strong my friend, we will have to weather this storm.
What begs the question is how much did Deep Silver really care about the franchise as a whole? Let's review 2017-release.
1. The 2017 trailer, over 1m views on Youtube. Now I get the arguement for and against but lets be honest negative news flows much faster and sticks. Why release a trailer which is basically Alpha stage. Envrionments were fine but the models curated a mass of criticism. Even me as a fan had to look twice. Was it pressure of the kickstarter? Or was it Deep Silver pushing? If what we're led to believe is true Cedric has a massive disagreement with Deep Silver over this, hence Shibuya not having their name on the trailer. Says enough.
2. The PR, take the Epic thing out of it for a moment. What PR has there been? Media were consistently using old materials, even into release. Was wasn't this addressed publicly? Deep Silver should have come down on this. Next is the community relationship, there wasn't one. It seems crazy not to market the game with the help of the fanbase who know it best.
What about the whole embargo issue, another problem the game didn't need.
3. Epic: Now from a money making sense I get it but from a PR front this could well have been one of the single worst things to happen. Now I admit I don't give 2 shits about using another storefront but the strength of discontent was major. Now they could use this for a major title like Metro, but with a Niche title like Shenmue I fear the reputation has taken such a hit off of this, one that will linger for years, which ruined trust with some fans and created more negative press that they didn't deal with.
4. Marketing. Now some of the trailers towards the end were decent with the release trailer being very good. But overall this was poor. The older trailers were clearly WIP but given the reaction to the 2017 trailer why didn't they slow down on this, maybe show more screens etc? Now I know there was pressure from a large number of fans wanting gameplay and maybe they listened too much to it and then pushed this stuff out to keep people sweet. That said if this was part of a strategy then it was highly flawed. Lessons were not learnt. Couple that in with PR fuck ups and it really doesn't bode well.
Then comes in the Shenmue 3 videos with Yu Suzuki. Great videos once translated, but why the fuck weren't they translated from the start? Also this was led by IGN Japan, not Deep Silver! Shows how much effort they put in to helping others understand the game/series.
Now saying that pinning your figures on a trophy site that is inaccurate for financials is beyond stupid. If something isn't looking good that's fine but back it up with hard data, not some tracking that has little actual credibility. Also by stating it is the sole reason for the revision being dropped is ludicrous, one game isn't responsible for a $7million revision. What were they really expecting from a game which has been kicked more times than I can count with such cock-ups.
Now Shenmue is niche, it was never going to sell millions but it had the potential, with the right care and attention to do well. It did not get that at all.
I'm biased of course. I love this franchise and community but Shenmue has been let down by the above IMO. That said the final financials/end of year stuff is due in May. We might see some hard data there and be surprised.
This isn't the end of the series, not while Yu wants to do it and the community are behind him, we need to be more than ever. But I reckon this is Deep Silver done and funding will have to come from elsewhere.
We can get through this, give it time.