Marketing Shenmue 3

9dragons said:
Marketing Shemmue 3 is a tough matter. It is easy to play the arm chair expert and criticize Deep Sliver how the marking was done so far. And it is true from a superficial point of view the market was bad. But how do you promote something like Shenmue 3.

How to promote a game almost nobody wanted back then. You cannot use the predecessor games to generate interest. This might bring some bad memories back. You cannot compare it was modern games , it would lose such comparison. So a big marketing campaign is out of question. Because Shenmue 3 has nothing what the masses want. So what can be done? Just small low profile marketing, like some youtube adds and maybe working together with some other gaming outlets. But not big gaming outlets. Smaller outlets for hardcore gamer. These sites might now what they have hear with Shenmue 3 . The big gaming outlets that cater the mass market are the wrong place for advertising Shenmue 3.

But I still think that ghost trick is seeing things a bit too negative. The game won't be send to death. If DS thinks out of the box, then there is chance to generate enough interest.
Click to expand...
Marketing Shenmue 3 isn't difficult at all. What will Shenmue 3 contain? Cool fighting scenes? Check. Beautiful environments? Check. Dramatic cutscenes? Check. Exploration? Check. Quirky minigames? Check. Not to mention great music.

Don't you think a few short video ads could be made out of some combination(s) of all of that? Marketing Shenmue 3 isn't about making people feel the way we do about Shenmue. It's about getting people interested in buying or at least learning more about a game that looks pretty cool in a video ad.
 
Ianpm31 said:
Nice to see Shenmue 3 atm is trending higher in preorders than Judement on amazon US and it's 5 months away from release. Remember Sega didn't want to fund S3 so this makes me happy.
Click to expand...
In all fairness, Judgement has a lot going against it compared to previous Yakuza games on Amazon. I'm not pre-ordering it on Amazon either, and I've gotten physical copies of every single Yakuza game for PS4 from Amazon at launch prior to this. First of all, the 20% Amazon Prime discount for pre-orders is gone as of last fall. That was a big reason I always ordered games from Amazon. The other reason is they are launching the digital version of Judgement several days before the physical release, like Nintendo tried with Wind Waker HD several years back. Given there's no steelbook or collector's edition of Judgement, no good discount on it, and digital is getting released the end of the previous week, I'm personally going for the digital version due to that. I think a lot of other people are going to do the same thing in order to play the game early.

Still, it's good to know that store pre-orders of Shenmue 3 are actually moving considering fans had from 2015 to mid 2018 to pre-order their copies. I hope all of these early orders aren't just from KS backers picking up extra copies, so that things continue to move steady.
 
If I were at a high position of Deep Silver this is what I'd do.

1. Coordinate a small video campaign having major stars from the game, Marshall and Matzukaze along with actors from other major roles that will appear describe their passion and the motivation for their various characters, ending off each video with the reminder of the August 27 release date.

2. A second video campaign containing snippets of footage with the major aspects of the game described by fans a video for Story, Combat, Investigation ect.

3. At E3 setup a booth give extended gameplay sessions to media and major backers to grease them up for big coverage and go live for a full weekend coverage of streams by a well trained PR team, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Each stream about 45 minutes long going over in immaculate detail the most exciting aspects Combat, Mini-Games and Exploration, release to YouTube to get max hype. Think of Treehouse, Immediately after E3 release the demo to the public as a free download PC/PS4 for viral marketing.

4. In July open the traditional marketing path banner ads for sites, a small TV campaign. Drop a huge final trailer with finalized box art, release it on the PlayStation Youtube,. Let these ads run til release and about two weeks after.

5. Have one final big press conference at Gamescom show off the big trailer again have Suzuki on stage interview the cast and major backers. Afterwards have PR Team and Suzuki for one final bonanza stream 2 hours of gameplay cutting out major story spoilers.

A bit naive in terms of budget. But that's how I'd do it.
 
All Shenmue needs to do is make an appearance at E3.

With Sony and EA not in attendance this year, it's a prime opportunity for Deep Silver to capitalize on a situation of fewer titles which then presents the opportunity to gain greater publicity.
 
Which games similar to Shenmue have the biggest audiences? We could start introducing the saga to them. Maybe get a newsletter with updates going?
 
It would be fantastic to have some behind the scenes footages from the development. Plus showing a little tease of Gameplay, where Ryo walks and runs during a little part of the map without spoiling too much.
 
chronopolis said:
Marketing Shenmue 3 isn't difficult at all. What will Shenmue 3 contain? Cool fighting scenes? Check. Beautiful environments? Check. Dramatic cutscenes? Check. Exploration? Check. Quirky minigames? Check. Not to mention great music.

Don't you think a few short video ads could be made out of some combination(s) of all of that? Marketing Shenmue 3 isn't about making people feel the way we do about Shenmue. It's about getting people interested in buying or at least learning more about a game that looks pretty cool in a video ad.
Click to expand...

I do not think so. Of Course Shenmue has the Features you mentioned but other games have these Features too and look way better than Shenmue. Marketing Shenmue with these Features is not the best idea.

The only chance is to point out the unique features Shenmue has has. Maybe the graphic style?


I wish I am wrong on this one and is easier to please the masses than I expect.

Bu I seriously doubt it when looking at the gaming charts at the moment. As long as games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Assasins Creed, and other big Budget semi open world games are that popular Shenmue 3 will have hard times to please to masses.

So the masses are not best target for Marketing. Maybe trying to reach some fans of Old School Adventure type games.

Maybe the Life is Strange Fanbase?
 
Kiske said:
Just FYI, if it fits in this topic :)

Click to expand...
I'd love to be a fly on the wall with how they are setting this up.

As for me I'd do the following:

  1. Kickstarter Update #99 outlining some new screens and plan going forward
  2. Kickstarter Update #100: Gameplay. Maybe the stuff that was shown to journalists at MAGIC?
  3. May: New 2 min gameplay trailer. Ryo running around maybe and a mini-game or two.
  4. E3: Extended booth from Deep Silver: Longer gameplay demos, new trailer and trial release.
  5. July-August: Social media. Lots of little tid-bits on social media. Targetting similar audiences to Shenmue. New screens, gameplay, hud, notebook

The question here is how much do you expand out of the typical Shenmue market. They want 1million sales. I'd say it can happen.

If they did a collectors edition that would help but I suspect that might cause friction with the Kickstarter backers? Thoughts?
 
I'd do a set of 90-second trailers each focusing on a different aspect of the game:

Journey: shows Ryo walking through each area of the game, both interiors and exteriors, with different weather patterns.
Query: shows Ryo talking to the multitude of NPCs.
Battle: shows Ryo in a variety of fight scenarios, as well as training.
Live: shows Ryo doing minigames.

The idea that there are these four distinct parts of the game that all come together to make a whole would then be expressed in a fifth, much longer trailer (like five minutes), where we see almost continuous gameplay going through all four of these, but without spoiling any (significant) part of the story.

I wouldn't show QTEs as there's a general disdain for them (due to other games not implementing them nearly as well as Shenmue did), so it'd probably be best to hide them.
 
They should have us fans do a big chunk of the social media marketing for them, I'll happily do my part sharing facebook posts and such. They really need a nice casual friendly trailer sometime soon too to build hype...
 
The fans are more talented than those actually in charge. They've repeatedly tarnished the brand's potential with bonehead marketing.
 
  • Stop releasing trailers using old footage
  • Stop releasing trailers with terrible sound mixing and pacing.
  • Stop doing AMAs on 8chan

  • Do release story trailers with good pacing and sound mix. if you aren't going to improve animations then instead.....
  • Do short developer walkthroughs of various systems and gameplay elements that cast the game in a better light than the awkward animations do.
Basically they need to 'NOT do' what they are currently doing and it'll be a marked improvement in marketing
 
You guys really think that copying the marketing for main stream AA games would be good for Shenmue? Just in case the game is as polished as the main stream stuf it might be a good idea. That somehow I doubt that S3 is ready yet. Showing unfinished stuff will generate attention too but that type of attention the fans want. I think the game won't be ready and polished only 1 to 2 month before the game is going to release. So showing a finished product at the e3 would be the best thing. Showing the Game when it really ready.

I do not think the concept of the main stream stuff, showing a gameplay trailer every day is not the right option. I am also getting bored seeing too much of a game before it is released. Showing too much is sometimes also not the best option always.
 
RiGoRmOrTiS said:
  • Stop releasing trailers using old footage
  • Stop releasing trailers with terrible sound mixing and pacing.
  • Stop doing AMAs on 8chan

  • Do release story trailers with good pacing and sound mix. if you aren't going to improve animations then instead.....
  • Do short developer walkthroughs of various systems and gameplay elements that cast the game in a better light than the awkward animations do.
Basically they need to 'NOT do' what they are currently doing and it'll be a marked improvement in marketing
Click to expand...
When did Deep Silver do an AMA on 8chan? People that work for another company that's owned by Deep Silver's parent company did the AMA. Deep Silver and YS Net have nothing to do with their parent company or the affiliate, unless you want to play six degrees of separation. People are ready to continue blowing this out of proportion and are actively encouraging people to boycott Shenmue 3 because of it, so try not to misrepresent what happened.
 
Last edited:
9dragons said:
I do not think so. Of Course Shenmue has the Features you mentioned but other games have these Features too and look way better than Shenmue. Marketing Shenmue with these Features is not the best idea.

The only chance is to point out the unique features Shenmue has has. Maybe the graphic style?


I wish I am wrong on this one and is easier to please the masses than I expect.

Bu I seriously doubt it when looking at the gaming charts at the moment. As long as games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Assasins Creed, and other big Budget semi open world games are that popular Shenmue 3 will have hard times to please to masses.

So the masses are not best target for Marketing. Maybe trying to reach some fans of Old School Adventure type games.

Maybe the Life is Strange Fanbase?
Click to expand...
I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on this.

It doesn't matter what Shenmue does better or worse than other RPGs/Open world games when it comes to advertising because most of the targets of the ads won't know that until they play it.

You're confusing what is true (which is a bit unfair, not many games will do as many things well in a single game as Shenmue will at it's budget level) with how things look.

Marketing is all about making things look a certain way, not about promoting truth. You can make an average or even bad game (which S3 surely isnt) look enticing if you cherry pick the right stuff and show them off the right way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top