Sales of Shenmue III: Where are we now?

probably even Biscay don't know if Deep Silver has some real figures, and if those are positive or negative for them.

In any case don't forget that Gamestat in unreliable as a source in general especially for Shenmue 3, since it's a game impossible to track on accounts until you unlock the first trophy (and the first trophy can come even after 5 hours...).
Also it doesn't take in cosideration multiple copies on the same account, something that it's not to understimate for a Shenmue game.

If Gamestat figures currently say 60k copies (that means 60.000 accounts that unlocked at least 1 trophy), it means we're probably past 100k alone on PS4... and for a mere investment of $2-3 million from Deep Silver, it's enought break-even and profit even at a average $40 price range (again on PS4 alone).
 
The person who runs Gamstat posted this on Reddit in response to someone:
Shenmue III is popular in Asia, and I've received many signs that I'm underestimating Asian figures. Add the margin of error - it might easily be around 80-100K (which is still a big failure for Shenmue III).

Unfortunately, I can't calculate the confidence interval - considering all those manipulations and tricks I apply - I'm not that good with statistics.
Click to expand...

 
Last edited:
mjqjazzbar said:
The person who runs Gamstat posted this on Reddit in response to someone:
Click to expand...
100k seems more realistic. We shall see. Either way 50k tracked players is clearly wrong lol.
 
First thing, he can't pretend to know if it's a failure or not, seems like a damage control post on his side.

His system is just not reliable in general, and while acknowledging the lack of asian data, he still fail to undestand that his way of tracking games, simple doesn't works for games such as Shenmue 3 that are added on the accounts (and then tracked) only after the first trophy is unlocked, and that the resulting data will be just an undestimation, and should just be considered just like that, nothing more.
 
Last edited:
Suzaku said:
First thing, he can't pretend to know if it's a failure or not, seems like a damage control post on his side.

His system is just not reliable in general, and while acknowledging the lack of asian data, he still fail to undestand that his way of tracking games, simple doesn't work for games such as Shenmue 3 that are added on the account (and then tracked) only after the first trophy is unlocked, and that the resulting data will be an just an undestimation, and should just be considered just like that, nothing more.
Click to expand...
In his defense, when he initially started the site his way of calculating player counts was more or less 100% accurate. Even after having to change to the current methodology (the old method stopped working), it can be very effective for games that sell 2m+.

Unfortunately, when dealing with smaller numbers, it’s possible to massively overestimate or underestimate player counts depending on the sample group. In this case, the sample group is skewed pretty far in the wrong direction.

Tracking games based on trophies is very hit and miss and S3’s programming error re the game not tracking on a PSN account unless at least one trophy has been unlocked makes it even more so.

That his system is flawed in this instance isn’t his fault though. If you want to direct your ire towards anyone, consider the analyst who used this data without looking into this and potentially damaged the future of the series as a result.
 
japalp said:
Wait a second - a website that supposedly tracks sales data, or just data in general, is saying, "I'm not that good with statistics"? I think that tells us all we need to know about their numbers.
Click to expand...

Precisely
What bothers me is the guy from gamestat not only seems arrogant when he say "which is still a big failure for Shenmue III", but he also admit that "I'm not that good with statistics".
Wait, isn't Gamestat a site about statistics?

It's just like if I open a site about modern art and then I admit "I'm not that good with modern art"...

At least he should take some responsibility and say sorry, since his site is used even by companies, he can't just act like it's not his business.
 
Suzaku said:
Precisely
What bothers me is the guy from gamestat not only seems arrogant when he say "which is still a big failure for Shenmue III", but he also admit that "I'm not that good with statistics".
Wait, isn't Gamestat a site about statistics?

It's just like if I open a site about modern art and then I admit "I'm not that good with modern art"...

At least he should take some responsibility and say sorry, since his site is used even by companies, he can't just act like it's not his business.
Click to expand...
It’s not his fault that companies use his stats without digging a little deeper. Again, for larger games his figures are pretty accurate.

Just looking at the site and the way his figures are calculated, I can tell you that he is very good with statistics. He just knows that the data he has isn’t enough to calculate an accurate estimate and would rather not damage the integrity of his site by coming up with a definitive answer that will more than likely end up being wrong.
 
It's not really his fault a Swedish analyst used his data to make a huge claim about Shenmue 3's financial performance. I think the analyst is to blame for using that data, but maybe it was the only tool at their disposal. @tomboz, where would this kind of information typically come from in such a report? All gamstat appears to be trying to do is give people a basic metric for seeing how a game is doing. I would view it as a hobbyist site at most.
 
mjqjazzbar said:
It's not really his fault a Swedish analyst used his data to make a huge claim about Shenmue 3's financial performance. I think the analyst is to blame for using that data, but maybe it was the only tool at their disposal. @tomboz, where would this kind of information typically come from in such a report? All gamstat appears to be trying to do is give people a basic metric for seeing how a game is doing. I would view it as a hobbyist site at most.
Click to expand...
Can’t help you too much there on account of not being a financial analyst.

If I had to guess, I’d imagine it’s a combination of chart analysis, publisher tweets, contacts within sites like Amazon and sources like Gamestat and Steam Spy. Together these should be enough to paint a fairly accurate picture.

As the analyst in question here notes though, in Shenmue 3’s case there is very little information out there and so he had to rely pretty much entirely on Gamestat. In his defense, he may very well have used it when predicting sales of larger games like Metro and Darksiders in the past and been given a fairly accurate result which then lined up with Embracers data later on.

If he hadn’t done his research and found out about the backer copies and had been provided with accurate figures from Gamestat in the past, I guess it’s understandable how he might see 50,000 as being a realistic possibility and Gamestat as being a reliable source.
 
Got it. I guess it's all up to Wednesday now. It seems Deep Silver/Embracer stock is doing well in spite of this speculatory revision to their Q3 (shouldn't it be Q4?) earnings.
 

Another article by a long-time fan.
 
Stop believing the 50k number. Lets be realistic here.
Over 20k physical units we know were sold in JUST Japan alone without even counting digital. So the rest of the world is 20k including physical + digital units? LOL
 
I have already said this on another topic but I will rewrite here :)

It is hard to know how far Gamstat is from the real numbers.
But we have one exemple: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

The editor have said they sold more than 100k unit in japan
It was the 28 of january.
At the time gamestat was saying there was 40k player.
And today Gamestat have 54k player.

Another point of comparaison, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim sold 34k unit in his first week in japan


I am not saying the sell of Shenmue 3 are not as high as DS was expected, but it is maybe not the disaster that some say.

And it is just my opinion but I would be VERY suprise if Shenmue III have less than 200k unit sold (Ps4+epic+Backers)
 
Ianpm31 said:
Stop believing the 50k number. Lets be realistic here.
Over 20k physical units we know were sold in JUST Japan alone without even counting digital. So the rest of the world is 20k including physical + digital units? LOL
Click to expand...
Hell, there was an additional 7.5K copies sold just from all the Limited Run Games and Pix'n Love collector's editions. And that's still not counting regular retail copies or any digital sales at all, including PC.
 
My conservative guess is they sold about 125,000 copies worldwide with the Gamstat wackiness accounted for.

That's about $6.25 million revenue (let's just average $50 per copy) on top of Kickstarter.

They're saying they're revising profits down $7,736,246 due to Shenmue 3 under-performing AND Biomutant not coming out. What would the split between those titles be?

If Shenmue is the culprit for all of that money going missing, that means they expected to sell around 280,000 copies ($14 million) worldwide (we missed by 155,000 copies = $7,750,000). Let's make Biomutant share half the burden ($3,875,00), that means Shenmue 3 should've sold about 200,000 copies, missing the mark by about 80,000 copies.

There's my stupid fuzzy math. I'm not sure what Deep Silver's appetite for risk is, but it seems like Shenmue 3 didn't lose them that much money, if it lost any at all. A revenue re-alignment doesn't mean Shenmue lost money.
 
Last edited:
As no official release date for Biomutant has been announced, we have moved therelease from Q4’19/20e into the next financial year. As such, we lower Q4’19/20erevenue for the THQ segment from SEK 450m to SEK 300m. We acknowledge that Biomutant would most likely have had a much larger impact than SEK 150m, but given strong reviews of Darksiders Genesis and solid sales figures on PC, we think that the console release will perform stronger in Q4’19/20e than we originally thought.
Click to expand...

That suggests Biomutant not coming out cost them $15 million--300,000 copies sold. I guess you could try to make a conclusion based on that.

Anyway, reporting isn’t even making it clear Biomutant shares burden in the lowered projection. I can't believe they expected Biomutant to sell more than Shenmue 3. I hardly know what it is.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top