- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
A lot of people, if not all have been going about Deep Silver, Koch Media and Epic. but I have yet to see anyone take into consideration what YSNET want. I mean, what if Yu-san and YSNET do not want to move forward with Koch Media. We have instances over the past year where you could say there might have been some friction on the part of the developer and publisher, most notably, the Epic deal.
But with statements indicating that Shenmue III did indeed make a profit, that can do nothing but strengthen Yu Suzuki's position to shop around for another publisher. He has a product which sold, niche or not. It sold on top of a Kickstarter campaign which seen a lot of copies of the game go out for free, in that regard. It sold, despite being exclusive to a PC store. It sold, despite an arguably average advertising campaign. Most of all, it sold in the face of weekly/monthly trolling, criticism, and clickbait bastardising of both the franchise and Yu Suzuki himself. You can sit on the fence all you want, hypothesize about this, wonder about that, but money and profit margin is all that matters in this business, and Shenmue III has profited.
To add to the attractive appeal of a publisher investing in a future Shenmue game, there are quite a few incentives:
What happens in the future, I will agree, that since... 2 years ago, I have had zero doubts about Shenmue IV, as well as the series being completely finished. I still have zero doubts. But, this is Yu Suzuki we are talking about. He is the man. He does things on his own terms, with no compromise. Honestly, I think we will have a bit of a wait, possibly the majority of 2020, before Shenmue IV is even announced. That's not a bad thing either because we have 1 more element of DLC to come, as well as a steam release to promote. That's outside of any other deals which could be struck as the year goes on, such as Xbox Game Pass, or Switch deals (personally I cant see any of these happening, but they are possible). I would hazard an educated guess that staff will remain at YSNET, quietly working away. I could be wrong, but common sense would say that a good chunk of money will have been reserved to keep the majority, if not all of the staff on for a sustained period of time throughout 2020. They will be free to quietly work away on the future, as we deal with Kickstarter rewards, and a steam release.
The next game could probably be the last in the series The staff is already assembled infrastructure and contacts already in place Research and story are already done Assets, materials and architecture are in place A loyal fanbase, with its own solidified community
I cant speak for everyone, nor can I claim to know anything others don't, but Shenmue is in a good place believe it or not. So is YSNET, believe it or not. We are NOT going into another 20 years of no Shenmue. This is just the beginning. Just gotta go back to practicing our Wude.
:) My friend, spot on. I'll post this as an article on shenmueitalia.com, this is something that people needs to read.