How much Budget do you think Shenmue IV will need to give us the Shenmue experience and why!?

Guy-ManAfterAll said:
Well, Jim Sterling is known for being "subversive" and like to shit on things or incense stuffs, just to go against the general opinion. I mean that's what he is now, a parody of himself. A while back, I thought he was a pretty good journalist, because he wasn't afraid to shit on AAA exclusive, and kinda tell what every other journalists didn't dare to.

If I recall correctly, Jim Sterling even made a video stating that Shenmue was never good, and that Shenmue 1&2 were completely overhyped shit. So yeah, I wouldn't listen to him.

And Super Eyepatch Wolf is more an entertainer than a critic. His videos are well made, good rhythm, editing, funny and all. But it's here for entertaining reasons. You can see on many videos (the one about Shenmue 3 is a good example) that he exaggerates alot of things to make it funny, and often put asides objective parts (positive and negative), because while it would be worth mentioning in a REAL critic, it's not fun nor entertaining to talk about.

Sadly, that's what most people wanna watch. Not people who goes in depth to talk about a game, but people who make stuff entertaining.

I was hesitant to make a video review of Shenmue 3 myself, but when I saw everything I wanted to talk about and presents and explain why it is good or not, it would be a 1h30-2h videos, and, not only do I not have time to do this right now, thus I should replay Shenmue 3 before doing so, but I really, don't know anybody who would be interested in a 2h video on Shenmue 3, except diehard fans
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Those guys don't give a F...ck about the Shenmue series; they just do videos about the series because of the views; everyone likes to watch a video game series crash and burn; its just like when people go to racing sports car events just to watch the crashes. What I find amusing is that they say they wasted time of their lives playing Shenmue 3 yet they didn't mind wasting 30 min to 1h to talk trash about the game. I wonder why !? :unsure:
 
And that spam is now gone!
 
Well Kingdome Come Deliverance had a budget of 36-40 Mil USD
and that was with Kickstarter, Koch Media / Deep Silver and investor money
and that game was still considered a AA game that needed a lot of patches and fixes.

So it totally depends on the team and what they want to do
and if they can convince someone that they need exactly that kind of budget.
But just by giving them 40 Mil USD doesnt mean that it will be absolutely perfect.
If the whole team doesnt know how to use it in the project or if the project was just too ambitious right from the start
it could end up even worse.

They still would need to hire the right people and work in a environment like back in the old days.
Like 150+ employees, all developed in house.
And if they really want to go for that Shenmue 1 quality but in a larger game world, with modern graphics,
animations, every character fully voiced etc
they would probably easily reach the same 40 Mil USD budget mark.
KCD still sold over a million copies in just one week and after two years they sold more than 3 mil copies.
Despite all the quest bugs, glitches and stuff the vanilla KCD version had, people still bought it
because serious european style open world RPGs have a lot of fans who will gloze over some mistakes.
Would a Shenmue 4, the fourth part of a story game set in China, reach these kind of numbers nowadays?
I have my doubts. And what would happen if a 40 mil USD Shenmue part 4 flops super hard
and its not even the final part of the story? The game series would be dead.

Its not that i dont want a big budget Shenmue with all the classic qualities
but looking at it from a neutral viewpoint, i think it sounds way too risky for everyone
to invest so much more money. Just think about it. A table with Ys Net and all the publishers that exist on this planet.
And Ys Net shows them what Shenmue is about, the story, the characters, the gameplay loop,
the budget to sales numbers ratio of the old games and whats still all missing in the storyline.
And then Ys Net asks them if anyone is interested in giving them 40 mil USD.
I dont think anyone would take that deal.
 
Tosh said:
Well Kingdome Come Deliverance had a budget of 36-40 Mil USD
and that was with Kickstarter, Koch Media / Deep Silver and investor money
and that game was still considered a AA game that needed a lot of patches and fixes.

So it totally depends on the team and what they want to do
and if they can convince someone that they need exactly that kind of budget.
But just by giving them 40 Mil USD doesnt mean that it will be absolutely perfect.
If the whole team doesnt know how to use it in the project or if the project was just too ambitious right from the start
it could end up even worse.

They still would need to hire the right people and work in a environment like back in the old days.
Like 150+ employees, all developed in house.
And if they really want to go for that Shenmue 1 quality but in a larger game world, with modern graphics,
animations, every character fully voiced etc
they would probably easily reach the same 40 Mil USD budget mark.
KCD still sold over a million copies in just one week and after two years they sold more than 3 mil copies.
Despite all the quest bugs, glitches and stuff the vanilla KCD version had, people still bought it
because serious european style open world RPGs have a lot of fans who will gloze over some mistakes.
Would a Shenmue 4, the fourth part of a story game set in China, reach these kind of numbers nowadays?
I have my doubts. And what would happen if a 40 mil USD Shenmue part 4 flops super hard
and its not even the final part of the story? The game series would be dead.

Its not that i dont want a big budget Shenmue with all the classic qualities
but looking at it from a neutral viewpoint, i think it sounds way too risky for everyone
to invest so much more money. Just think about it. A table with Ys Net and all the publishers that exist on this planet.
And Ys Net shows them what Shenmue is about, the story, the characters, the gameplay loop,
the budget to sales numbers ratio of the old games and whats still all missing in the storyline.
And then Ys Net asks them if anyone is interested in giving them 40 mil USD.
I dont think anyone would take that deal.
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Loved playing Kingdome Come Deliverance; for me its one of the best games of this generation and one of the most immersive games I've ever played. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Shenmue; Npc's have their own daily schedule; in quests you have to meet npc's at a certain hour of the day and if you don't meet them between a certain time frame the quest may become unavailable. Another aspect similar to Shenmue is the progress of the main character wich is a bit similar to that of Ryo's. You start of as Henry the son of a blacksmith; Henry does not know how to fight; he is not a soldier; he can't use a sword or a bow properly and he also doesn't have the physical condition to wear armor; but on the course of his journey he will learn all of these traits and become a full fledged warrior another fun fact is that he also can't read so he will only acquire certain informations if he ends up learning out to read but in order to do so he will have to practice is reading skills.
The hunger system also works really well; with Henry having to eat severall times a day receiving buffs and debuffs accordingly; he can also get injuries from battle; etc.. that will need to be treated and resting is also an important part of this system as well. It is a great system that could also work in Shenmue as long as it still retains more of an arcade style and less of a simulating one.
Its director Daniel Vavra is also known to be a fan of Yu Suzuki and was largely influenced and inspired by the Shenmue games; so much so that he even posted a tweet showing of his Shenmue 3 day one edition and steelbook case.

 
Down by Law said:
Speaking of China, what happened with the Chinese version of III ? Did it ever come out?
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I dont think so, if you search for Shenmue in the mainland China PSN store there are no results at all
and in other physical asian game stores you can only find the japanese, Taiwan / Hongkong and korean version.
 
That's a shame it didn't release in China. Hopefully in Shenmue 4, they ignore the Chinese law and put back to old gambling system into the game. Might as well if its not going to sell there at all

I did like the Shenmue 3 system as well though. I enjoyed collecting the items and how everything was interconnected.

Hopefully they'll be room for both mechanics in the sequel
 
What a joke they had to change the game to suit China and then it never came out. You'd think they would lap up a game set in their country.
 
Its weird because wasnt the news a long time ago that Oasis Games will be the publisher for the chinese PS4 version?
But if you look at the Oasis Game site and Shenmue 3, the store redirects you to the
Taiwan version but of course the Taiwan version is not available in the mainland China store.
And the PC version for mainland China on WeGame is not available, it just says stay tuned.
 
Down by Law said:
What a joke they had to change the game to suit China and then it never came out. You'd think they would lap up a game set in their country.
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Well it pretty much shows us that it was a gamble that didn't pay off. Guess Yu Suzuki didn't go to the fortune-teller before betting on that.
 
If the Shenmue animation doesn't secure 4 a larger budget, I would be totally happy for 4 to just use 3's components and only have one large town where s**t goes down. Have it be a normal length game, but everything happens in one place. All the characters all in. Mayhem ensues. Xiuying Hong, Ryo and Ren defeat Lan Di together. Might be worth having the shenmue animation do a shenmue 3.5 for more character development and for ryo's kung fu to get to the point where he can actually hit lan Di when he meets him again etc.

If that as a bare minimum can't be produced that I am all for ending the series as a manga or through the anime. Mind you, the 2d shenmue drawings popping up on Twitter look pretty good as well. A story with streets of rage-esque fighting would be pretty cool.

A lesser budget doesn't necessarily mean a lesser product. As long as the product is of a good quality, regardless of the format, an ending is better than no ending.

We are also super lucky that Yu Suzuki cares so much about the series. Most directors would have given up a long time ago.
 
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