Shenmue 3 Permanent Price Drop

otbr87

otbr87

Joined
Nov 26, 2019
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Shenmue
The price on Shenmue 3 just dropped for good on the PSN store. The game is a year and a half old and already price is cut in half along with it being in the clearance bins at Walmart and Best Buy during early 2020 isn't a good sign for the franchise. The upside appears that if you don't already own this game(why not?!)you'll get a great deal on it digitally.

pureplaystation.com

PSN Deals: Hitman 3 is Your Deal of the Week, Shenmue 3 and DLC Get Permanent Price Drops | Pure PlayStation

It's slim pickings in this week's PlayStation Store sales with Hitman 3 and Shenmue 3 being the headline acts. There are hundreds of other deals still running from last week, though, so consider this a top-up.
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Shenmue III

Play as Ryo Hazuki, an 18-year-old Japanese martial artist hellbent on avenging his father’s death. In this third installment of the epic Shenmue series, Ryo seeks to solve the mystery behind the Phoenix Mirror, an artifact sought after by his father’s killer. His journey takes him to an...
store.playstation.com
 
At this point I feel like the best thing for the franchise would be for Shenmue 3 to be given away as one of the monthly games on ps+, although if DS has no plans to publish a fourth game I can see why they’d be reluctant to do so.
 
For those curious, since January 15 of this year, the number of tracked players on PSN Profiles and PSN Trophy leaders has jumped from 4,805 and 5,483 to 5618 and 6,399 respectively. This equates to growth of 17% on both sites over a six month period.

For comparison, between November 2020 and January 2021, the same sites showed an increase of 262 and 400 tracked players, for cumulative growth of 6% and 8% respectively.

This would suggest that there have been more than twice as many sales of Shenmue 3 on the PS4 over the past six months than there were over the three month period prior. It might have been a slow starter, but Shenmue 3 has legs and Deep Silver’s sales tactics are clearly working.
 
This isn’t a Nintendo game and it’s already been heavily discounted numerous times.

I completely agree that Deep Silver is playing the long game. If/when you follow them on social media, you will see Shenmue 3 is still frequently touted to their audience. I honestly think we’re incredibly lucky this is the publisher attached to Shenmie, no matter if they did some things wrong. They drive their games to financial success.
 
Personally, I see this as a good thing. I think that selling it for £50 day one was pretty ballsy and a big ask at the time. Many games have long legs these days and if it helps people take the plunge, then i'm all for it!
 
bcdcdude said:
Personally, I see this as a good thing. I think that selling it for £50 day one was pretty ballsy and a big ask at the time. Many games have long legs these days and if it helps people take the plunge, then i'm all for it!
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I think that they did it that way because they knew fans would buy an extra copy at full price to help with the sales.
 
Sergeynest said:
I think that they did it that way because they knew fans would buy an extra copy at full price to help with the sales.
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I'm hoping people will. I bought it on disc when it came out, then again on PS4 digital, then GOG games PC digital and even bought a bunch of clearance copies recently when I closed out a GameStop that was going under, even though it's not a profitable title from a retail standpoint I support wherever I can.
 
Sonoshee said:
I'll add to the optimism by saying this could even be a price drop prepping for the announcement of Shenmue 4!
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From the recent replies we have been getting by some of the site staff members at the Dojo, I sometimes wonder that they must know something that is going on behind the scenes that we dont. 😱
 
Sergeynest said:
I think that they did it that way because they knew fans would buy an extra copy at full price to help with the sales.
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Oh aye, I think I bought 5 copies myself! :sweatsmile: Think i've spent over £500 maybe? At the same time, I won't spend £20 on - say - the Crash Bandicoot trilogy or something as I think "I'll wait until it's a tenner". I guess the difference is YsNet need all the help they can get; AAA publishers like Activision don't!

From the recent replies we have been getting by some of the site staff members at the Dojo, I sometimes wonder that they must know something that is going on behind the scenes that we dont.
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I can't help but wonder...at the same time, loose lips sink ships and all that!
 
Didnt know a game dropping permanently in price after a whole year and a half was a bad thing...

And what's realistic about expecting any significant boost in sales at this point? The money that it's going to make has been made
 
bcdcdude said:
Personally, I see this as a good thing. I think that selling it for £50 day one was pretty ballsy and a big ask at the time. Many games have long legs these days and if it helps people take the plunge, then i'm all for it!
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That was a huge mistake in my opinion. Perhaps one of their biggest (and they made a surprising number of mistakes).
 
Reprise said:
That was a huge mistake in my opinion. Perhaps one of their biggest (and they made a surprising number of mistakes).
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I had a few ‘arguments’ with people on the site about this ahead of the games release. I get why they did it, but I still maintain that charging full price led to a lot of people comparing the game to a AAA title and completely killed any goodwill that the game may have gotten for being a Kickstarter game. Launching at £30 probably wouldn’t have ‘saved’ the game, but probably would have prevented some of the criticism.
 
I don't see any problem with the price drop. The game has been out long enough. I now have the opportunity to get more copies though cheaper than before so it's a win-win
 

Some interesting tweets from John Linneman at Digital Foundry on the subject of game pricing and the general discourse around it. Think it goes a lot further than simple revenue extraction and the profit motive, as the perception of overall value and the value (or lack of) placed on developer labour has gotten really fucked up in recent years.
 
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