Shenmue 3 Sales

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I wonder how true those stats are. How do the majority of people NOT finish a game they purchased?

You have pretty the same phenomenon in literature at the point it leaded to some serious studies by intellectuals like the famous book of Pierre Bayard ("How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read").

Repetitiveness and time-consuming are the most common flaws in video games, even the great. Like arcade machines, you don't have to beat a game to appreciate most of its essence. Meanwhile, it's so easy to buy ton of games at once nowadays, more than we can play in one life.

Being stuck at a boss or level is maybe the number one reason people end to give up quickly.
Another reason: when the game fails to continue the sense of escalation (gameplay, story, growing sense of feeling powerful, etc) leading to a general lack of interest. We can suppose many people gave up when Ryo had to work in the port of Yokosuka.

One in four people for Shenmue III is a great percentage considering all the flaws. That means the game has still the quality of being basically enjoyable and not "stressful" as Suzuki likes to sum up. I would say it's the magic of Shenmue core formula.
 
70% is what you get with digital downloads. Physical is more about 30-40%.
But even if we're being vastly generous with that 70% (because I doubt all sales are digital + the fact that even at that rate, there's also the licence fee for SEGA) that'd mean 300k copies at full fat 60 dollars to break even. What's the incentive here for a mid tier publisher ? Not even the positive word of mouth since Shenmue III reviews were mostly mixed/average.

There is case to make though that making a Shenmue IV would be cheaper and quicker since a lot of the work is already done... But then it'd mean working on a smaller budget.
I may be incorrect on this, but I believe that the deal with SEGA was worked out prior to E3 2015, and that they had already received whatever they were going to get, maybe outside of whatever they got for helping with marketing in Japan.
 
I think many people jump in the Nier bandwagon without knowing much of what it is.
Nier 1 was very repetitive although charming and filled by moments of brilliance, especially in the world building. I didn't play Automata but the hype around the sequel was irrational as much as Shenmue 3 at E3 since both have niche communities.

Nier Automata was just insane. One of the very, very few games I've actually understood what the hype was all about.
It's actually in Game Pass for Xbox from today if you have it.
 
My brother still hasn't completed GTAV and plays a bunch of old games he has had for years. He's currently playing Arkham Asylum and I'm pretty sure he got it near release day.
 
I wonder how true those stats are. How do the majority of people NOT finish a game they purchased?
Should be pretty accurate because it's based on steam's achievement.

Of course, if you play in offline mode, won't count, but who plays in offline mode? Numbers would be the same.

The reason why this happens for me, its simply the amount of games out there. Look dude, FFVII Remake! Hey what are you doing, why you didnt buy Doom Eternal yet? Hey, hey, don't forget Trials of Mana! ANIMAL CROSSING. What about this indie created by 1 person that made an entire world?

You have a lot of games, a lot of possibilities, a lot of money. This isn't the 90s anymore, when you have a few games, some of them bad, and you were kids with no money... Not anymore.
 
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I tend to focus on one game at a time and will do as much as possible before moving on to the next game. Some games are just nigh on impossible to get 100% without putting an insane amount of time into it or requiring multiple playthroughs which I just can't be arsed to do.

The only games I've platinumed are Shenmue I & II and Persona 3 & 5 Dancing which says a lot.

Based on games mentioned here, my stats are as follows:
NieR Automata - 72% (this game is the ultimate slow burner game...took me two attempts to fall in love with it)
Valkyria Chronicles 4 - 60%
Yakuza series - between 50% and 85% depending on the game.

For comparison's sake, 41% of players have completed Uncharted 4 on the easiest difficulty (29% in moderate)

My apologies - 40.6% of players have completed Shenmue III (I got mixed up with finishing Bailu which is 61%), but that's still pretty impressive whichever way you look at it.
 
I may be incorrect on this, but I believe that the deal with SEGA was worked out prior to E3 2015, and that they had already received whatever they were going to get, maybe outside of whatever they got for helping with marketing in Japan.
Sega were given "a percentage of the sales" as far as I remember, so that would mean they still get their share of each euro of revenue the game continues to make.
 
Sega were given "a percentage of the sales" as far as I remember, so that would mean they still get their share of each euro of revenue the game continues to make.
Was that actually confirmed anywhere or was it just us speculating, because the recent Q&A with Biscay makes it sound like SEGA already made their money, as if it were an up-front fee. Maybe something the KS covered? Just speculating, I'm not really sure.
 
No. What makes you think that? Even in S3 it is made very clear that nobody but Sega owns the copyright.

Sega never sold any part of Shenmue to anyone. Yu got the license to make S3, maybe also subsequent entries, but the license belongs to Sega and nobody else.

Selling the license was never going to happen.
 
No. What makes you think that? Even in S3 it is made very clear that nobody but Sega owns the copyright.

Sega never sold any part of Shenmue to anyone. Yu got the license to make S3, maybe also subsequent entries, but the license belongs to Sega and nobody else.

Selling the license was never going to happen.
So, does he have the license to make the 4th one ? Or he needs to do some negotiations with Sega ?
 
So, does he have the license to make the 4th one ? Or he needs to do some negotiations with Sega ?
I Imagine there would be some negotiations but I don't think that will be an issue. It would make sense for Sega to go with whatever terms they had before. It's basically money for doing nothing
 
I tend to focus on one game at a time and will do as much as possible before moving on to the next game. Some games are just nigh on impossible to get 100% without putting an insane amount of time into it or requiring multiple playthroughs which I just can't be arsed to do.

The only games I've platinumed are Shenmue I & II and Persona 3 & 5 Dancing which says a lot.

Based on games mentioned here, my stats are as follows:
NieR Automata - 72% (this game is the ultimate slow burner game...took me two attempts to fall in love with it)
Valkyria Chronicles 4 - 60%
Yakuza series - between 50% and 85% depending on the game.

For comparison's sake, 41% of players have completed Uncharted 4 on the easiest difficulty (29% in moderate)

My apologies - 40.6% of players have completed Shenmue III (I got mixed up with finishing Bailu which is 61%), but that's still pretty impressive whichever way you look at it.

40.6% talking of a game of 30 hours it's actually amazing.
 
40.6% talking of a game of 30 hours it's actually amazing.
A high completion rate isn’t necessarily a good thing. It stands to reason that the people most likely to complete the game are the hardcore fan base (especially given the long grindy sections of the game and the mixed reviews the game has received). A high completion rate suggests that fans made up a significant proportion of sales with very few casual gamers picking it up.

As per my earlier post though, the actual completion rate should be around 32.5% which is in line with Shenmue 1 (31.6%) and Shenmue 2 (34.6%).


Continuous growth (12/10 - 04/04)
PSN Profiles: 851->2382 (+180%).
True Trophies: 956->1852 (+94%).
PSN Trophy Leaders: 1900->3300 (+74%).
 
A high completion rate isn’t necessarily a good thing. It stands to reason that the people most likely to complete the game are the hardcore fan base (especially given the long grindy sections of the game and the mixed reviews the game has received). A high completion rate suggests that fans made up a significant proportion of sales with very few casual gamers picking it up.

As per my earlier post though, the actual completion rate should be around 32.5% which is in line with Shenmue 1 (31.6%) and Shenmue 2 (34.6%).


Continuous growth (12/10 - 04/04)
PSN Profiles: 851->2382 (+180%).
True Trophies: 956->1852 (+94%).
PSN Trophy Leaders: 1900->3300 (+74%).

I'm not saying it's amazing talking about the sales, I'm saying it's amazing talking about the finishing game discussion.

Anyway, the speculation of "is it good or bad that a lot of people finished the game" for me it's nonsense. This may hurt some of you, but only 5% of people of steam finished Shenmue 2. Is that bad? Idk, it is what it is.
 
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I'm not saying it's amazing talking about the sales, I'm saying it's amazing talking about the finishing game discussion.

Anyway, the speculation of "is it good or bad that a lot of people finished the game" for me it's nonsense. This may hurt some of you, but only 5% of people of steam finished Shenmue 2. Is that bad? Idk, it is what it is.
This isn’t really too surprising as most trophy sites and Gamestat seem to have tracked about twice as many Shenmue 1 players as they did Shenmue 2 players. Given that they sold together, it suggests that about half of the people who played Shenmue 1 didn’t like it and so didn’t bother to try Shenmue 2 (which is a shame as I think the latter was a far superior game). This would also explain why Shenmue 2 has a higher completion rate on console as many of the people who would’ve given up after trying it had already been put off by the first game.

I wouldn’t say that a 40.6% completion rate (actually closer to 32.5% when taking into account the trophy tracking issue) is amazing from any perspective, especially considering how many backers there were. If anything, it suggests that there were a fair number of Shenmue fans that couldn’t bring themselves to complete the game.
 
If anything, it suggests that there were a fair number of Shenmue fans that couldn’t bring themselves to complete the game.
We can't know that because we only know the bakers, not the full number of people who got it.
 
Just as, and partly because of the sales, the completion rate doesn't paint the whole picture here, positive or negative...sadly, nothing has as of yet. However, I think that the high completion rate compared to some of the other games @Sput mentioned does lean more in the positive direction.

Regarding SEGA, Cedric did answer the question as to if they made money on the game. I was the one who asked the question, "Did SEGA make any money off of Shenmue III?". Says Cedric:

"SEGA just make money with the license. So, the license itself. So, not directly with uh, with Shenmue III."


While not perfectly clear, it seems that they took in some money for the license to make Shenmue III, which likely was negotiated along with Shibuya and Sony.
 
We can't know that because we only know the bakers, not the full number of people who got it.
Personally, I don’t know any bakers.

Max physical PS4 sales in Japan: 39,829.
Max physical PS4 sales in Japan inc KS: 44,291.
Estimate for max worldwide physical PS4 copies in circulation (including KS): 201,323.

Estimate for total number of backer copies (including PC): 77,231.
Estimate for total number of PS4 backer copies: 54,062 (assuming a 70/30 split in favor of PS4).

Estimate for max worldwide physical PS4 sales: 147,261.
Estimate for max total worldwide PS4 sales (physical and digital): 210,373 (assuming a 70/30 split in favor of physical sales).

Growth projections:
74% -> 42,374 physical PS4 copies in Japan (inc KS) -> 192,610 physical PS4 copies worldwide (inc KS) -> 138,548 physical PS4 copies worldwide (exc KS) -> 197,926 physical and digital PS4 worldwide sales.

94% -> 47,245 physical PS4 copies in Japan (inc KS) -> 214,749 physical PS4 copies worldwide (inc KS) -> 160,687 physical PS4 copies worldwide (exc KS) -> 229,553 physical and digital PS4 worldwide sales.

Combining the two datasets gives an estimate of somewhere between 197,926 and 210,373 PS4 physical and digital sales worldwide. This doesn’t account for Special/Limited editions (15,000+), people who purchased multiple copies or people whose consoles are not connected to the internet. The estimate does however work under the assumption that 22% of players are based in Japan (as per Gamestat’s tracking data) as well as the two other assumptions mentioned in the calculations. This number does seem to be roughly in keeping with the sales data we have for the HD rerelease of Shenmue 1 and 2.
 
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