Embracer Q3 Report Presentation @ 9AM CET (3AM EST) 19-2-2020/2-19-2020

[WuyingRen]

What did Sony deal bring? Nothing really. Just such a huge hype that Kickstarter servers exploded within hours. More money than any other videogame ever got on Kickstarter. E3 2015 Kickstarter announcement was a marketing masterpiece in my opinion. And maybe "anyone could have given them an E3 stage", but at the end of the day, it's been Sony and the people closely involved in making Shenmue 3 come back possible, and no one else.

Can’t agree more with this. That E3 was insane. Within the space of an hour or so the most requested remake ever gets announced and one of gaming’s legendary dormant franchises launches a Kickstarter. The hype was insane.

I think people seriously underestimate what an impact making the announcement on the Sony stage had. If they’d just posted about it on twitter or sent out press releases to gaming publications the news would have been buried underneath all of the articles about FFVIIR instead of being mentioned in most of them.

Making the announcement the way they did was probably the difference between us getting Ryo instead of the Roy we were first shown.

 

[GhostTrick]

I have to disagree on both points. The exposure was what lead to the Kickstarter being as successful as it was and definitely contributed towards it breaking records. Would I have traded exclusivity for it? Probably not; but Shenmue 1/2 sold terribly on Xbone and so not much was lost through this.

The Epic deal absolutely benefited YSNet. It probably didn’t improve the quality of S3, but it gave them a huge amount of cash to potentially begin production on S4. Again, I doubt it really cost them too many sales and certainly didn’t lead to a worse game.

"benefited YsNet" Deep Silver pocketed the cash. They got nothing. Except for the backlash. The Epic deal only brought a ton of crap for YsNet

What did Sony deal bring? Nothing really. Just such a huge hype that Kickstarter servers exploded within hours. More money than any other videogame ever got on Kickstarter. E3 2015 Kickstarter announcement was a marketing masterpiece in my opinion. And maybe "anyone could have given them an E3 stage", but at the end of the day, it's been Sony and the people closely involved in making Shenmue 3 come back possible, and no one else.

Yeah guess what, The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter also tanked KS servers in a few minutes. I'm not saying "E3 stage give them no exposure". I'm saying that trading a stage for an exclusivity is a pocket change. And that's the problem with Shenmue IP. Every time there's a deal involved, it's for pocket change. A good chunk of exclusivity for something that doesn't even benefit the IP.
"More money than any other video game ever got on Kickstarter". You could also argue that Shenmue is also the biggest IP to come back on KS. As I said before: Even "Not-Castlevania" got nearly as much as Shenmue 3 (5.5 vs 7.5). Then again, I'm all for S3 appearing at Sony's E3. The problem is the following: An exclusivity for this ? Come on.

 

[GhostTrick]

Can’t agree more with this. That E3 was insane. Within the space of an hour or so the most requested remake ever gets announced and one of gaming’s legendary dormant franchises launches a Kickstarter. The hype was insane.

I think people seriously underestimate what an impact making the announcement on the Sony stage had. If they’d just posted about it on twitter or sent out press releases to gaming publications the news would have been buried underneath all of the articles about FFVIIR instead of being mentioned in most of them.

Making the announcement the way they did was probably the difference between us getting Ryo instead of the Roy we were first shown.

When I read some of the posts on Dojo, it feels like no one ever gave a shit about Shenmue 3. Like, I get it, it gave a good exposure to the Kickstarter. But let's not pretend that "it would've been buried". We both know it's not true, especially when you compare all the other games on Kickstarter.

I said it at the time it happened, and I'll say it again, I think the EGS deal was the right way to go for sure (this is even after hating EGS for the recent Story Quest Pack DLC delay, and as mainly a PC gamer, I'm not the biggest fan of EGS originally lol).

The PC version of Shenmue III was never going to sell too much, the main sales were always going to be on PS4. Those that intended to play on PC, would have likely have paid for the limited edition Kickstarter version at the time, and thus PC sales at release would have been small. Deep Silver knew this, and decided to take a lump sum upfront which I guess, they estimated would be a larger amount than the sales that they expected. We know from other developers that EGS have been paying millions for upfront sales, so when you look at Shenmue III's ~$12,000,000 cost, it's a straight up no brainer. As others have mentioned, this money would have been used to recoup the games costs, and if there is any extra after dividing it up between DS/YsNet/Shibuya etc, YsNet could use this to keep the studio running, and hopefully start work (or prepare) for what's next.

As much as people like to hate on the decision, and on Deep Silver, they are the ones who know the numbers relating to the development cost, investment, marketing etc, and thus they can run the projections to make the correct choice. They have professionals who do this for a living so I'm sure they did what was right. We don't have the numbers, don't know the deals behind closed doors, so all we can do is look at it logically, and logically, it also makes sense.

Edit: Also you've got to be mad if you think that Sony did nothing for Shenmue III. You really think that if YsNet launched a Kickstarter on their own randomly that it would have hit the $6.3 Million that it did due to all the exposure at E3... Never.

No E3 stage. I'm not saying, again, that Sony did nothing for Shenmue 3. I'm saying trading an exclusivity for an E3 stage isn't smart at all.

As for the Epic deal:
Great. Deep Silver made their money back. The game didn't get more developpment time despite that. It was just sent to die, both critically and commercially. Saying "professionnals can only be right" is wrong though. Unless we think DS marketing was stellar for Shenmue 3.

 

[WuyingRen]

"benefited YsNet" Deep Silver pocketed the cash. They got nothing. Except for the backlash. The Epic deal only brought a ton of crap for YsNet

Believe twitter hearsay if you wish, but there is absolutely no way in hell that YSNet didn’t pick up a good chunk of whatever Epic paid. YSNet has a deal with DS whereby DS will give them X% of the profit from every copy of the game sold (looking at where the funding for the game came from, I’d guess this was probably 50/50), so do you really think that Epic were able to sell X00,000 copies of the game to Epic without giving YSNet a penny? Not a chance and if there were a slither of one it would still result in a lawsuit and YSNet downing tools.

When I read some of the posts on Dojo, it feels like no one ever gave a shit about Shenmue 3. Like, I get it, it gave a good exposure to the Kickstarter. But let's not pretend that "it would've been buried". We both know it's not true, especially when you compare all the other games on Kickstarter.

Still to this day S3 is the most funded video game on the site, so it clearly is true. I’d take the extra 20% or so in donations that announcing the way they did lead to over an Xbone port any day of the week.

The HD release of 1/2 suggests that we might have seen an increase in sales of about 10% had there been an Xbone port, but had the Kickstarter not been as successful as it was, YSNet might never have found a publisher and ended up having to develop the game with $5m instead of $12m. Imagine what that would have done to sales.

 

[Suzaku]

Sony really helped Shenmue 3 giving lots of exposure at E3 2015.

Let's try to imagine a scenario without S3 at E3 2015.
Probably Kickstarter would still be succesful but would have earned half of the total amount, now imagine a Shenmue 3 with a dev. budget of $3 million instead of $6 million...
Those things has direct impact.

 

[mjqjazzbar]

The Bloodstained Kickstarter was also run by professionals who could communicate. The Shenmue 3 Kickstarter had Awesome Japan. In spite of this, Shenmue 3 is still the record holder. Yeah, the Sony announcement was a huge deal. It was huge exposure.

 

[Kiske]

"benefited YsNet" Deep Silver pocketed the cash. They got nothing. Except for the backlash. The Epic deal only brought a ton of crap for YsNet




Yeah guess what, The Wonderful 101 Kickstarter also tanked KS servers in a few minutes. I'm not saying "E3 stage give them no exposure". I'm saying that trading a stage for an exclusivity is a pocket change. And that's the problem with Shenmue IP. Every time there's a deal involved, it's for pocket change. A good chunk of exclusivity for something that doesn't even benefit the IP.
"More money than any other video game ever got on Kickstarter". You could also argue that Shenmue is also the biggest IP to come back on KS. As I said before: Even "Not-Castlevania" got nearly as much as Shenmue 3 (5.5 vs 7.5). Then again, I'm all for S3 appearing at Sony's E3. The problem is the following: An exclusivity for this ? Come on.

Ask 100 people in 2015 what's "Castlevania", then ask what's "Shenmue" and let see the answers.

As for "The Wonderful 101", they are surprisingly successful, but they've reached 1.6M$ after 15 days.
Shenmue III reached 2M$ after 9 hours.

It's easy with the hindsight to say "that was a bad move", "this would have been better", but it took 14 years for Shenmue to come back under the spotlight and before Sony's E3 Stage, i don't remember seeing THAT lot of people ready to help Suzuki-san fulfil his dream of making Shenmue 3.

 

[shredingskin]

We are talking about Sony, scoring an exclusivity by sharing a stage (which was equally a promotion for Sony as it was for S3), is next to nothing for them.

 

[Kenzo130]

D'accord
Il a toujours cru aux bonnes ventes. Il dit également que le PDG de DS n'est pas dans le projet.
Je voulais juste que cedric commente ces mots. C'est assez étrange

Cest meme tres etrange

 

[Sheephead]

Ask 100 people in 2015 what's "Castlevania", then ask what's "Shenmue" and let see the answers.

As for "The Wonderful 101", they are surprisingly successful, but they've reached 1.6M$ after 15 days.
Shenmue III reached 2M$ after 9 hours.

It's easy with the hindsight to say "that was a bad move", "this would have been better", but it took 14 years for Shenmue to come back under the spotlight and before Sony's E3 Stage, i don't remember seeing THAT lot of people ready to help Suzuki-san fulfil his dream of making Shenmue 3.

Not to mention that Wonderful 101 is created by Platinum Games who have been releasing critically acclaimed games, one after another for years now. Also Wonderful 101 is a hidden gem that many know about, but didn't play due to the failing of the Wii U. People will put there money into a Kickstarter for these reasons alone, and they can trust Platinum Games that they will deliver on on their goal without even having to think that they won't.

 

[Kyo_JP]

I also think that management in Sony changed a lot after 2016, Adam Boyes left, Gio Corsi not coming back to stage, the boring E3 conferences after 2015 and 2016 with that boring guy, so we don't know what plans changed during development

 

[GhostTrick]

Believe twitter hearsay if you wish, but there is absolutely no way in hell that YSNet didn’t pick up a good chunk of whatever Epic paid. YSNet has a deal with DS whereby DS will give them X% of the profit from every copy of the game sold (looking at where the funding for the game came from, I’d guess this was probably 50/50), so do you really think that Epic were able to sell X00,000 copies of the game to Epic without giving YSNet a penny? Not a chance and if there were a slither of one it would still result in a lawsuit and YSNet downing tools.


Still to this day S3 is the most funded video game on the site, so it clearly is true. I’d take the extra 20% or so in donations that announcing the way they did lead to over an Xbone port any day of the week.

The HD release of 1/2 suggests that we might have seen an increase in sales of about 10% had there been an Xbone port, but had the Kickstarter not been as successful as it was, YSNet might never have found a publisher and ended up having to develop the game with $5m instead of $12m. Imagine what that would have done to sales.

I do believe people in the known indeed.

And no, it's not "clearly true". To say that Shenmue 3 KS announcement would've been buried isn't just true. Otherwise, why did that E3 stage for Shenmue 3 got that much applause ? Why did people link Shenmue 3 to that E3 ? Because let's be real: It was a big name by itself. It was a big get.

Then again, in no way I'm saying getting that E3 stage was bad for exposure. I'm saying that exchanging that for an exclusivity deal isn't enough to justify.

Ask 100 people in 2015 what's "Castlevania", then ask what's "Shenmue" and let see the answers.

As for "The Wonderful 101", they are surprisingly successful, but they've reached 1.6M$ after 15 days.
Shenmue III reached 2M$ after 9 hours.

It's easy with the hindsight to say "that was a bad move", "this would have been better", but it took 14 years for Shenmue to come back under the spotlight and before Sony's E3 Stage, i don't remember seeing THAT lot of people ready to help Suzuki-san fulfil his dream of making Shenmue 3.

Except Bloodstained isn't Castlevania. Ask 100 people in 2015 "What's Bloodstained". And then ask what's "Shenmue".

I'm not saying again it was a bad move. I'm saying it was too light of an exchange. An exclusivity deal for an E3 spot ? That sounds rather light.

 

[GhostTrick]

Not to mention that Wonderful 101 is created by Platinum Games who have been releasing critically acclaimed games, one after another for years now. Also Wonderful 101 is a hidden gem that many know about, but didn't play due to the failing of the Wii U. People will put there money into a Kickstarter for these reasons alone, and they can trust Platinum Games that they will deliver on on their goal without even having to think that they won't.

And yet, here we are, nearly 2 millions for something even more niche. My point is that saying Shenmue 3 would've been barely funded is wrong by available data. Or, alright, I accept that thinking. But then we should say that, as a whole, no one ever cared about Shenmue 3, that it was a small IP that no one cares about.

 

[Kiske]

I do believe people in the known indeed.

And no, it's not "clearly true". To say that Shenmue 3 KS announcement would've been buried isn't just true. Otherwise, why did that E3 stage for Shenmue 3 got that much applause ? Why did people link Shenmue 3 to that E3 ? Because let's be real: It was a big name by itself. It was a big get.

Then again, in no way I'm saying getting that E3 stage was bad for exposure. I'm saying that exchanging that for an exclusivity deal isn't enough to justify.




Except Bloodstained isn't Castlevania. Ask 100 people in 2015 "What's Bloodstained". And then ask what's "Shenmue".

I'm not saying again it was a bad move. I'm saying it was too light of an exchange. An exclusivity deal for an E3 spot ? That sounds rather light.

"The game's development was led by former Castlevania series producer Koji Igarashi."

Sorry. I wrongly assumed they've used Igarashi's reputation and legacy to promote "Bloodstained".
My bad.

 

[WuyingRen]

I do believe people in the known indeed.

And no, it's not "clearly true". To say that Shenmue 3 KS announcement would've been buried isn't just true. Otherwise, why did that E3 stage for Shenmue 3 got that much applause ? Why did people link Shenmue 3 to that E3 ? Because let's be real: It was a big name by itself. It was a big get.

Then again, in no way I'm saying getting that E3 stage was bad for exposure. I'm saying that exchanging that for an exclusivity deal isn't enough to justify.




Except Bloodstained isn't Castlevania. Ask 100 people in 2015 "What's Bloodstained". And then ask what's "Shenmue".

I'm not saying again it was a bad move. I'm saying it was too light of an exchange. An exclusivity deal for an E3 spot ? That sounds rather light.

If you’d rather believe some random ‘in the know’ people over common sense, that’s your business. I’m sure YS just smiled and thanked DS after they effectively stole $5m or so from him.

Again, if you want to believe that the Sony announcement wasn’t the driving factor behind S3 setting Kickstarter records, that’s your business too. I guess that explains why the spiritual successors to Megaman, Castlevania and Banjo Kazooie all raised more money than S3, right?

I think you’re massively overvaluing the exclusivity deal from Sony’s point of view too. The game was always going to sell the vast majority of its console copies on PS4.

 

[Eishen]

I have a doubt in all of this. The "Gamestat" thing and the loss os income, it was a rumour and is not true then, right?

 

[Kyo_JP]

I have a doubt in all of this. The "Gamestat" thing and the loss os income, it was a rumour and is not true then, right?

It was a report by an external company using datas outside of the internals that they have in Embracer, so it was a guessing, they project stuff based on their available data

 

[B-Man]

We are talking about Sony, scoring an exclusivity by sharing a stage (which was equally a promotion for Sony as it was for S3), is next to nothing for them.

That's not the point though. We're not talking about how it affected Sony; we're talking about how it affected Shenmue. It undoubtedly had a hugely positive effect on the game's initial funding.

And yet, here we are, nearly 2 millions for something even more niche. My point is that saying Shenmue 3 would've been barely funded is wrong by available data. Or, alright, I accept that thinking. But then we should say that, as a whole, no one ever cared about Shenmue 3, that it was a small IP that no one cares about.

I don't think that it would have been "barely funded." Of course there were people that cared about it and it would have raised a few million either way. But that would have only been from the series' core fanbase (people like us). I think that the project garnered a lot of extra backers because of the exposure of Sony's E3 conference. People saw how the crowd reacted and then saw the reaction videos on YouTube and wanted to be a part of history. Can you imagine how the game would have turned out if the budget was even lower?

And it's not a matter of how many people knew the name "Bloodstained." Bloodstained was always inextricably linked to Castlevania. It's more like, "Oh, you like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night? Well, how would you like to play a new game just like Symphony of the Night on modern platforms?" The same can be said about Mighty No. 9 as it relates to Mega Man and Yooka Laylee as it relates to Banjo Kazooie. It's delusional to think that Shenmue has ever been nearly as well known or popular as those franchises.

Let's put it this way. What if Inafune had been allowed to use the actual Mega Man IP the way Suzuki was allowed to use Shenmue? I believe that it would have raised way more money than Shenmue III did because of how mainstream Mega Man is compared to Shenmue.

 

[GhostTrick]

"The game's development was led by former Castlevania series producer Koji Igarashi."

Sorry. I wrongly assumed they've used Igarashi's reputation and legacy to promote "Bloodstained".
My bad.

But it's not Castlevania. And you know it. Same for Mighty n9.

If you’d rather believe some random ‘in the know’ people over common sense, that’s your business. I’m sure YS just smiled and thanked DS after they effectively stole $5m or so from him.

Again, if you want to believe that the Sony announcement wasn’t the driving factor behind S3 setting Kickstarter records, that’s your business too. I guess that explains why the spiritual successors to Megaman, Castlevania and Banjo Kazooie all raised more money than S3, right?

I think you’re massively overvaluing the exclusivity deal from Sony’s point of view too. The game was always going to sell the vast majority of its console copies on PS4.

I rather believe journos saying so and being huge fans of Shenmue indeed. I rather believe, that indeed, YsNet didn't sell their PC backers out.

I never said that the Sony E3 stage didn't contribute to that. But then you proceeded to reply to your own question "spiritual successor". Those were spirital successors and yet, they manage to raise amounts close to that. It's not "Shenmue spiritual successor" but Shenmue 3. Odds were pretty high already to be the most funded.

That's not the point though. We're not talking about how it affected Sony; we're talking about how it affected Shenmue. It undoubtedly had a hugely positive effect on the game's initial funding.


I don't think that it would have been "barely funded." Of course there were people that cared about it and it would have raised a few million either way. But that would have only been from the series' core fanbase (people like us). I think that the project garnered a lot of extra backers because of the exposure of Sony's E3 conference. People saw how the crowd reacted and then saw the reaction videos on YouTube and wanted to be a part of history. Can you imagine how the game would have turned out if the budget was even lower?

And it's not a matter of how many people knew the name "Bloodstained." Bloodstained was always inextricably linked to Castlevania. It's more like, "Oh, you like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night? Well, how would you like to play a new game just like Symphony of the Night on modern platforms?" The same can be said about Mighty No. 9 as it relates to Mega Man and Yooka Laylee as it relates to Banjo Kazooie. It's delusional to think that Shenmue has ever been nearly as well known or popular as those franchises.

Let's put it this way. What if Inafune had been allowed to use the actual Mega Man IP the way Suzuki was allowed to use Shenmue? I believe that it would have raised way more money than Shenmue III did because of how mainstream Mega Man is compared to Shenmue.

All spiritual successors. And all managed to raise a lot of money as you said. There's no reason to think Shenmue, not a spiritual successor, could do even more.

 

[WuyingRen]

I rather believe journos saying so and being huge fans of Shenmue indeed. I rather believe, that indeed, YsNet didn't sell their PC backers out.

I’m not saying that the decision was made by YSNet nor that it wasn’t made behind their back. From what I can imagine, the decision probably really pissed them off, but they still got money from the deal.

I must be coming down with a case of amnesia, because I don’t remember the articles from all of these super reliable journalists you speak of. I remember all of the ‘YSNet sells out backers’ stories just fine, but the huge story of a publisher scamming a small indie developer out of millions of dollars didn’t seem to make any headlines. Strange...

I never said that the Sony E3 stage didn't contribute to that. But then you proceeded to reply to your own question "spiritual successor". Those were spirital successors and yet, they manage to raise amounts close to that. It's not "Shenmue spiritual successor" but Shenmue 3. Odds were pretty high already to be the most funded.

Shenmue 3 made more than Yooka Laylee and Mighty No 9 combined.

Spiritual successor or not, if you were to give the average gamer today a choice between the spiritual successor to a hugely successful series that had sold tens of millions of copies, the spiritual successor to a game so influential that it literally has a genre named after it, the spiritual successor to what some may argue is the best platform game ever made or the sequel to a game that they most likely never played and is best known for being a huge commercial failure, which do you think they’d choose?

On paper, the S3 Kickstarter had no right to perform as well as it did and would probably be bottom of the above list in the eyes of most of today’s gamers. That it was the best performing of all four of the Kickstarters shows just how important the Sony stage was to Shenmue 3.

I’ve no doubt the game would still have been funded had the news of the Kickstarter been announced quietly on a few gaming websites, but would it have done anywhere near as well as it did?

If only $3m-$5m had been generated through the Kickstarter, do you still think DS would have been so keen to jump on board? Personally, I don’t. They heard ‘record-breaking’ and saw dollar signs if you ask me.

Also, how do you know that Sony didn’t waive or lower the platform royalty fee (usually around $7 per copy) as part of the deal? If that was the case, and looking at the 80:20 split of S1/2 sales in Europe and NA and the 100:00 split of sales of it in Japan, YSNet may have saved themselves more in royalty fees than they would have made through Xbone sales.

You (and some others on here) speak as though Yu and his team are a bunch of bumbling idiots with no business acumen whatsoever and I think you’re doing him and them a huge disservice. The fact is, none of us are privy to any of the details of the deals made surrounding S3. Ultimately though, Yu got to make the game he wanted to make. Maybe once you’ve launched the most successful video game Kickstarter in history and put out a game that tens of thousands of hardcore fans are happy with, you might be in a position to criticize him. Until then, maybe don’t?