How can a game with an investment of likely $5 million cost them $8 million.The gems have already started to flow
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havenāt played it yet
What amazes me is they didn't even bother with the usual weasel words like "EXPERTS SUGGEST Poor Shenmue 3 Sales Slash Deep Silver's Revenue by $8 Million!!". Journalists really don't give a fuck these days.How can a game with an investment of likely $5 million cost them $8 million.
Fucking idiots.
And they wonder why games journalists/journalism gets a bad rep?What amazes me is they didn't even bother with the usual weasel words like "EXPERTS SUGGEST Poor Shenmue 3 Sales Slash Deep Silver's Revenue by $8 Million!!". Journalists really don't give a fuck these days.
That was some real " deep gold " stuff right there.All Iāll say is this: have patience.
I understand that a lot of people here have a deep love for the franchise, but getting ourselves worked up over mere speculation doesnāt help anyone. Until we get official confirmation as to whether Shenmue IV will be made thereās little we can do. Realistically this is the best time to be proactive by simply supporting the upcoming DLC that will be releasing or demanding for Shenmue IV on social media.
Letās not forget that from 2001-2015 we had nothing, that the only reason Shenmue III even exists is because we never gave up on it. If Shenmue III sales flop, that will be a shame but we should keep moving forward. Mistakes were no doubt made with Shenmue III, but the past is the past and we canāt change it. So the best we can do is to move forward and focus on the future, because Shenmue will only really die when the fans give up on it.
Are these the same āexpertsā that deem Gamestat a viable source for compiling a financial forecast? If so, referring to them as experts might actually make the article more inaccurate.What amazes me is they didn't even bother with the usual weasel words like "EXPERTS SUGGEST Poor Shenmue 3 Sales Slash Deep Silver's Revenue by $8 Million!!". Journalists really don't give a fuck these days.
It might be me being stupid, and depending on when that report was written etc but I get the impression that quarterly report will likely only repeat what's written in that report.Digging into the report a little deeper, it seems that it was carried out by a Norwegian investment bank (ABG Collier). Their revisions are based on their own prior revenue estimate and seem to be reliant entirely on the notion that there are only around 50,000 copies of the game in circulation (which we know to be false).
Looking at the revenue shortfall between their initial estimate and their revised forecast, it would seem that the analysts had originally predicted that around 250,000 copies of Shenmue 3 would be sold (The 50,000 number that theyāre running with would mean a 200,000 shortfall which, assuming the publisher were to receive around $30 of a $60 sale, would lead to a deficit of around $6m).
Whilst I donāt doubt that my own predictions in this thread could be inaccurate, Iād be very surprised if sales were below 200,000 and thus expect the official quarterly report next week to read very differently to this forecast.
Providing DS had realistic expectations going into launch, I donāt envisage sales being too much of an issue for them. What might prove significant though is the aggressive discounting weāve seen. The Black Friday target deal suggests that DS May have accounted for this in some part, but whether or not they expected other retailers to follow suit remains to be seen.
ABG provide these forecasts for thousands of companies in a variety of sectors and seem to do so without any direct input from the participating companies so as to remain independent and impartial.It might be me being stupid, and depending on when that report was written etc but I get the impression that quarterly report will likely only repeat what's written in that report.
We will have to see. They may have some actual hard data but if they based predictions on 250k copies being sold out there I sense thats a little unrealistic, given there's 50k kickstarter copies.
Cheers for clarifying, its early morning here and my mind isn't working.ABG provide these forecasts for thousands of companies in a variety of sectors and seem to do so without any direct input from the participating companies so as to remain independent and impartial.
Although the analyst may end up being correct that sales were lower than expected and that this in turn affected revenue, at this point that prediction seems to be based on the amount that the analyst expected the game to sell and the 50,000 figure they found on Gamestat.
The analyst clearly wasnāt provided with information about sales figures and so Iād imagine they were also making their own assumptions on Deep Silverās expected sales as well. We know his figures re total players are wrong and so it seems possible that his guess at the number of expected sales might be wrong too.
Time will tell, but I donāt see DS blaming S3 for reduced profits in this manner next week even if thatās been the case. I certainly donāt expect them to give any numbers when it comes to total sales (especially if the game has failed to meet their expectations).
Looking back at Embracerās previous quarterly reports, I think the best that we can hope for is a general indicator as to whether or not sales failed to meet, met or exceeded their expectations. Without knowing what those expectations were however, this information doesnāt really help us to establish whether or not the game was successful as we might have very different opinions as to what would constitute a successful release.Cheers for clarifying, its early morning here and my mind isn't working.
It's madness that the moment something like this happens Shenmue becomes the target. Gaming media are all over this. You would think Deep Silver would handle this more carefully.
I will try and watch this next week.
The whole thing is odd. I was talking to some other members in the community this morning and one raised a very good point, is this Deep Silver effectively trying to cut ties but saying nope didn't do well enough goodbye, even though sales might not have been as bad as implied.This all makes for depressing reading. However, if I'm understanding this report, they seem to be using Gamestat as a source to gauge approximately how many units have been sold (Ghostrick did make the point that the figure is current players, not units sold, which is important to note). So taking this into account, I will most definitely be waiting until the 19th before I start panicking. It's a strange one this report, but no point freaking out just yet. As tomboz said above, Cedrick has actually said he's pleased with how S3 has been doing, so let's see how this pans out. It's hard not to be pessimistic, especially given the franchise's history but let's have a bit of patience and not throw the towel in quite yet.
The whole thing is odd. I was talking to some other members in the community this morning and one raised a very good point, is this Deep Silver effectively trying to cut ties but saying nope didn't do well enough goodbye, even though sales might not have been as bad as implied.
It then begs the question why did they come on board. The major point was notoriety but I don't think they quite realised the work needed around this game to make it a success. Couple that with projections that seem stupid given the fact this was majority funded by a Kickstarter and there you have your figures. Of course the actual presentation may be very different, though I suspect it's not met their targets given the estimates we've made here, which seem OTT. E.g the re-releases sold between 250k-350k across all platforms if rumours are true. So to have upto 250k (of course we don't know for sure) as a projection for 1 quarter seems mental.
We won't throw in the towel. There's more to this than meets the eye IMO