Do you think Shenmue II would've done better on the PS2?

I think half the reason it did so poorly was because Sega lost faith and neglected to heavily market it. I think a PS2 port may have helped, but I don't know if the consumer awareness would have improved. There's also that the first game was so divisive that a good portion of the interested audience spent their money elsewhere, and likely spread negative word of mouth. A question like this is very complicated and requires a magic ball.
 
I shall expand on my above post a little more. Shenmue II did a lot to address the concerns and dislikes the original audience had with the first game and I think the Sega marketing team did nothing to alleviate those fears in the marketing much at all.
 
I'm just a 40 y/o fan who thinks that, whenever in the future it can logically happen with the right technology, versions of Shenmue should be made for any, and all, available consoles at that time ... even after Suzuki-Sensei has long since finished telling Ryo Hazuki's entire story.
 
Fire Tiger said:
Shenmue 3 is going to be much better as an animation.
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i havent played shenmue 3 yet and based on feedback i've seen, we have already come to the same opinion :)

absolutely. it would have sold more if not more copies than it did on dreamcast even without major promotion. ps2 was the system and i love my dreamcast.
 
Yeah, give Shenmue III a shake. If you know what happens and know where it falls down, you might have an easier time seeing the spots where it shines - like many others have on second playthroughs.

Anyway, on-topic... maybe? PS2 had a big install base which made it the go-to platform for shifting software, but a theoretical Shenmue II on PS2 might have suffered the same issue it had on Xbox, in that it was an "old" game by the time it reached the platform.
 
Interesting question. I don't think so, no. The PS2 had a vast array of games, so it would have got lost in a sea of competitors. I think Shenmue has always been destined to be a niche thing.

The original Xbox was also seen as a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast, so presumably a lot of the Sega fanboys migrated to the Xbox at the end of the Dreamcast's shelf life.
 
No, actually, I think Shenmue II would have been a pretty ugly game on the PS2. As good as the PS2 was, it wasn't anything special on the graphics side, and Shenmue II was a very detailed game for it's time. The PS2's textures and how it handled anti-aliasing wasn't great. Even the Dreamcast made textures look better than the PS2, even if the PS2 was a more powerful console.
 
Absolutely YES. It would have sold way more on the PS2, and maybe it could have led to a healthy franchise onwards.

Not only that system multiplied the original Xbox sales by a factor of 6x, but the audience for Japanese RPGs was definitely there. And I'd also add that, since it was a system way less advanced than the Xbox, the expectation for a technical showcase was lower, and a barebones port from the original game (as Shenmue IIx was) would have been better received.

I guess, though, it would have been way harder to port than to the Xbox, since the PS2 had quite an exotic architecture, which had the opposite approach of the Dreamcast's.
 
I've done some crude research to establish the answer by selecting a JRPG sequel typical of the era. The game I chose is Jade Cocoon 2, which I think is a good comparison as it's a direct sequel on the back of a relatively successful first game (first game was on PS1). According to vgchartz.com, Jade Cocoon 2 sold approximately 100,000 copies worldwide. Whereas according to shenmuedojo.net, the OG Xbox version of Shenmue 2 sold approximately 175,000 copies in the US territory alone by March 2005.

I think this shows that the PS2 market and appetite for this type of game was similar to that of the Xbox, and therefore in my opinion any difference in sales would have been negligible at best.

You would also need to take into account that Sega's support of the Xbox was more comprehensive than that of the PS2, with games like Panzer Dragoon Orta, Otogi and Crazy Taxi 3 being Xbox exclusives that did not port to PS2. As such, you would reasonably expect more of Sega's hardcore following to be Xbox owners and not PS2 owners. I am sure this factor would have been taken into account when Sega decided which platform would be best.
 
Mmm. I'm not sure Jade Cocoon is an apt comparison, since its profile and awareness was much lower than what Shenmue was in 2002 (and it also isn't a "direct continuation" in the vein than Shenmue II was to Shenmue 1)

But, even accepting that comparison, the first Jade Cocoon sold 270K copies for a console with a 100 million userbase (the Playstation 1), while Shenmue 1 sold 1,2 million copies for a console with a userbase of 9 million. So I'd rate its success as much higher than "moderate", thus expecting much higher sales than the 175K you mention Shenmue IIx got.

And that thing of Sega supporting mostly the Xbox in that gen (and then getting most Sega fans) is debatable too. Sega's policy at that time was quite split among all systems (and I'd say "erratic"). Xbox got an slightly higher amount of games, but Sega's most popular franchises (besides Shenmue) went to the Gamecube (Sonic) and the PS2 (Virtua Fighter 4). In fact, a point could be made that VF4 should share quite a good amount of common fans with Shenmue, and it sold 1,68 million units for PS2.
 
I don't think it would have done much better, I know what I prefer but the mainstream would have wanted to play GTA as a city exploration game.
 
Some fair points there, but Jade Cocoon is just one example - there are many other similar games to consider if you don't like that one. VF4 is not an apt comparison, in my view, because it's an out-and-out fighting game and the fourth game in an undoubtedly successful franchise. As I said, the Jade Cocoon research was crude and was done in a brief moment to get a feel for the appetite for this type of game on the PS2.

You would also need to consider that Shenmue 2 had already been released on the Dreamcast in the European and Japanese territories, and therefore most people who wanted to play the game had already done so (except for the US region). I can vouch for this personally, because I'd already played my PAL copy of Shenmue 2 by the time I became a PS2 owner. Although I loved the game, I doubt I would have bought the same game for my PS2.

Ultimately, we will never know because it wasn't released for the PS2.
 
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Yeah, of course we will never know for certain what would have happened. We are only having fun speculating, and I'll do it a bit more :-).

Demon's Triangle said:
I don't think it would have done much better, I know what I prefer but the mainstream would have wanted to play GTA as a city exploration game.
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GTA San Andreas sold 17 million copies on PS2. Shenmue didn't need to be remotely close to those numbers to have been sustainable. I will bring a number from pure intuition (without a serious analysis behind it), but I guess having 1 or 2 million sales for each installment would have been enough.
Yada San said:
You would also need to consider that Shenmue 2 had already been released on the Dreamcast in the European and Japanese territories, and therefore most people who wanted to play the game had already done so (except for the US region).
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Of course having been released already on Dreamcast would have deducted some sales from an eventual PS2 version, but the point precisely is that a platform that ended up selling 158 million units would have some untapped audience, that could have liked Shenmue but not had a Dreamcast.
 
Shenmue 1 & 2 (2018) breakdown:-

The action adventure RPG collection from SEGA - Shenmue I & II - sold 107,971 units first week at retail, according to our estimates. First week sales can be viewed on the VGChartz Global Weekly Chart for the week ending August 25.

Breaking down the sales by platform, the game sold best on the PlayStation 4 with 87,676 units sold (81%), compared to 20,295 units sold on the Xbox One (19%).

Breaking down the sales by region, the game sold best in Europe with 49,377 units sold (46%), compared to 39,117 units sold in the US (36%). Looking more closely at Europe, the game sold an estimated 10,162 units in the UK, 6,950 units in Germany, and 9,409 units in France.
 
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