Sales of Shenmue III: Where are we now?

I have a bunch of copies of the game (KS and retail) and havenā€™t played it yet.
ā€¦Based on the vague wording floating about, do I even count as one of the ā€œ50K playersā€ ?

The fandom has been exemplary, putting its money where its proverbial mouth is and actually buying copy after copy. It certainly wonā€™t be our fault should the worst come to pass. Until we get more concrete news and figures, I hope this is just another (temporary) internet freakout.
 
spud1897 said:
How can a game with an investment of likely $5 million cost them $8 million.

Fucking idiots.
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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.
 
Dietsoap said:
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.
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And they wonder why games journalists/journalism gets a bad rep?
 
Tsukuyomimagi99 said:
All Iā€™ll 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 doesnā€™t help anyone. Until we get official confirmation as to whether Shenmue IV will be made thereā€™s 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.

Letā€™s 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 canā€™t 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.
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That was some real " deep gold " stuff right there.
 
Dietsoap said:
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.
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Are these the same ā€˜expertsā€™ 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.
 
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 theyā€™re 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 donā€™t doubt that my own predictions in this thread could be inaccurate, Iā€™d 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 donā€™t envisage sales being too much of an issue for them. What might prove significant though is the aggressive discounting weā€™ve 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.
 
tomboz said:
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 theyā€™re 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 donā€™t doubt that my own predictions in this thread could be inaccurate, Iā€™d 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 donā€™t envisage sales being too much of an issue for them. What might prove significant though is the aggressive discounting weā€™ve 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.
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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.
 
spud1897 said:
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.
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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 wasnā€™t provided with information about sales figures and so Iā€™d imagine they were also making their own assumptions on Deep Silverā€™s 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 donā€™t see DS blaming S3 for reduced profits in this manner next week even if thatā€™s been the case. I certainly donā€™t expect them to give any numbers when it comes to total sales (especially if the game has failed to meet their expectations).
 
tomboz said:
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 wasnā€™t provided with information about sales figures and so Iā€™d imagine they were also making their own assumptions on Deep Silverā€™s 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 donā€™t see DS blaming S3 for reduced profits in this manner next week even if thatā€™s been the case. I certainly donā€™t expect them to give any numbers when it comes to total sales (especially if the game has failed to meet their expectations).
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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.
 
spud1897 said:
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.
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Looking back at Embracerā€™s 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 doesnā€™t 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.
 
I was wondering, despite Deep Silver predictions, we know that Shenmue 3 total budget is around $10mil, 7 of which comes from the crowdfunding, right?

This leave with just $3 million invested by both Shibuya and Deep Silver (I'm guessing $1mil from Shibuya and $2mil from DS).

With these kind of numbers, we are in the range where they could break-even at 30k copies or 60k depending on the retail price.

Also they should separate "missed sales" that is abstract data based on predictions, and real 2investments losses", which I don't think is the case of Shenmue 3.
 
Both of the articles posted about this report are incredibly misleading as they seem to suggest that Shenmue 3 has caused Deep Silver to lose money, when in reality they have actually just made less than they expected (assuming the report is even accurate).

In all likelihood, Deep Silver has probably already made their money back and then some from the Epic exclusivity deal.

It seems to have been established that the total budget for the game was around $12m, so removing the Kickstarter funds, that leaves around $5m of investment from Shibuya Productions, Sony and Deep Silver. We donā€™t know the exact split, but itā€™s very likely that the lionā€™s share of that came from DS.

Assuming the amounts from Sony and Shibuya were negligible and Deep Silver effectively invested $5m, the game would need to sell about 167,000 copies at full price for Deep Silver to see a return on their investment (assuming a standard revenue split). Itā€™s possible that as YSNet were fronting more than half of the budget they negotiated a higher revenue split with the publisher and as the game was heavily discounted shortly after release, that figure could be as high as 667,000.

The saving grace from Deep Silverā€™s perspective is the Epic deal. Reports suggest that exclusivity deals for smaller titles have generated around $10m, so assuming Deep Silver kept all of the money from the deal, they had likely already made a healthy profit from Shenmue 3 even before the game had been released. Even if they split the money with YSNet, they should have made their investment back at the very least.
 
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.
 
Sh3ppy said:
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.
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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
 
spud1897 said:
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
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DS possibly decided to back the project based on how successful and record breaking the Kickstarter was. They might have thought they had a guaranteed winner. Just conjecture but itā€™s a possibility.

It really does seem thereā€™s more to this though.
 
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