Shenmue 3 Permanent Price Drop

[BruceWayne911]

Shenmue is about to be 2 years old this price drop is normal.

 

[BruceWayne911]

Well at the very least it's inconclusive. VGChartz has been considered spotty in the past, and SteamSpy hasn't been as accurate as it was historically in years. The growth shown on the Playtracker site at least matches up with the fact Shenmue III has been heavily discounted throughout the year.

But no point getting bogged down in that. Shenmue is very much an "alive" franchise because of these releases, the continued merch sales, and the anime. It's just about convincing a publisher to take on the financial risk of a future game, which wraps round to the point I made a couple posts up about revenue. They'll want a worthwhile return on the investment and they want it faster than 2-3 years. I expect that's probably what is making Shenmue IV a difficult prospect, provided it isn't already in development behind the curtain.

I feel like everyone is waiting to see how the anime plays out before announcing/confirming Shenmue 4. If the Shenmue anime releases Q1/beginning of Q2 next year they could ride that momentum up to E3/Sony presentation.

 

[Spaghetti]

I feel like everyone is waiting to see how the anime plays out before announcing/confirming Shenmue 4. If the Shenmue anime releases Q1/beginning of Q2 next year they could ride that momentum up to E3/Sony presentation.

Maybe, but I don't see YsNet wanting a repeat of hungry fans beating their door down for a single drop of information. If Shenmue IV getting greenlit rides on the success of the anime, those conversations will happen behind closed doors and *probably* not see the game announced until a later date once it's deep in development. The ambiguity of whether it's in development or not is a good thing from YsNet's perspective because it gives them the peace and space required to just get on with the work, as much as it sucks for us not to know for the time being.

There are still big questions about what YsNet are doing *right now*. Game studios don't tend to sit without work for very long or else they go bust, but as far as we know they're open and have retained staff from their last major project *two years ago*, but nobody knows what they're working on.

 

[BruceWayne911]

Maybe, but I don't see YsNet wanting a repeat of hungry fans beating their door down for a single drop of information. If Shenmue IV getting greenlit rides on the success of the anime, those conversations will happen behind closed doors and *probably* not see the game announced until a later date once it's deep in development. The ambiguity of whether it's in development or not is a good thing from YsNet's perspective because it gives them the peace and space required to just get on with the work, as much as it sucks for us not to know for the time being.

There are still big questions about what YsNet are doing *right now*. Game studios don't tend to sit without work for very long or else they go bust, but as far as we know they're open and have retained staff from their last major project *two years ago*, but nobody knows what they're working on.

I'm not disagreeing with you but wouldn't be better to just confirm Shenmue 4 is in development without releasing any content? This community already suffered 15 years of limbo. If Yu doesn't want to release a trailer or artwork I'm good with that we got alot of things to hold us over(anime & Dragon/Phoenix collection).

 

[WuyingRen]

We need to dive deeper into that. I don't think its correct, even though im praying it is. Any other resources or deep dives you could do to get some more clarification?

It has Shenmue HD at 2.3 million players?

Shenmue I & II stats by Playtracker Insight

All the stats for Shenmue I & II on steam - owners, active players, playtime, achievements and more!

playtracker.net

If it had those numbers, i reckon a sequel would be greenlit in a heartbeat. I don't think we can trust that site unfortunately

Steamspy for whatever its worth has Shenmue 3 owners down in the range of 0 - 20,000

Shenmue III -

Steam Spy automatically gathers data from Steam user profiles, analyzes it and presents in simple, yet beautiful, manner. Steam Spy is designed to be helpful for indie developers, journalists, students and all parties interested in PC gaming and its current state of affairs.

steamspy.com

It also has Shenmue 1 and 2 owners at 50,000 - 100,000

Shenmue I & II -

Steam Spy automatically gathers data from Steam user profiles, analyzes it and presents in simple, yet beautiful, manner. Steam Spy is designed to be helpful for indie developers, journalists, students and all parties interested in PC gaming and its current state of affairs.

steamspy.com

For what its worth, VGchartz has Shenmue HD PS4 down for 270,000

Shenmue I & II for PlayStation 4 - Sales, Wiki, Release Dates, Review, Cheats, Walkthrough

VGChartz - extensive game chart coverage, including sales data, news, reviews, forums, & game database for PS5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch & PC

www.vgchartz.com

And Shenmue HD Xbox 70,000

Shenmue I & II for Xbox One - Sales, Wiki, Release Dates, Review, Cheats, Walkthrough

VGChartz - extensive game chart coverage, including sales data, news, reviews, forums, & game database for PS5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch & PC

www.vgchartz.com

Although VGcharts only tracked a couple of months after HD's release, so god knows what that number is now

I was thinking about doing something to commemorate the game’s two year anniversary, but given November’s busy release schedule am not sure how much time I’ll end up having to get it done. At the very least though, I’ll try and throw together some updates on trophy site numbers to get a better understanding of player base growth over the past two years. Without a better idea of how many copies the game sold in its first few weeks, however, that likely won’t help much when it comes to trying to pinpoint an exact total. I could perhaps compare to some other games for that, although would need to find a few with recently confirmed PS4 sales totals which isn’t always easy.

As for the figures, my first impression was also that 600k seemed way too high, but, on reflection, I don’t think it’s at all beyond the realms of possibility. Iirc, during the first annual Embracer conference after S3’s release, the Embracer CEO revealed that Metro Exodus had shifted more than half a million copies on Steam - and at that point it had only been on sale for a couple of days. With that in mind, could a game that’s been available for the best part of a year (not to mention one that’s been on sale for as little as $5 at times) have achieved the same feat? I definitely think so.

Steam DB is pretty useless for getting total player counts since Valve decided to set people’s profiles to private by default. I think they use some sort of extrapolation method these days, which, like Gamstat, becomes increasingly inaccurate the smaller the game is. It’s also reliant on people actually playing the game, which playtracker suggests the overwhelming majority of people who own the game haven’t done. Considering it’s been heavily discounted and sold as part of bundles, I can absolutely see this being the case (I have hundreds of games on Steam that I still haven’t gotten around to playing myself).

All that said, I do have quite a few questions about playtracker’s methodology, which is poorly explained at best. Ultimately though, I find it difficulty to see how they could be so far out, particularly when a lot of their other figures seem fairly on the nose. Of course, the same argument could be made of sites like SteamDB and Gamstat, although it’s a lot easier to see the flaws in their methodologies as they do a much better job of explaining them.

 

[ShenSu]

I was thinking about doing something to commemorate the game’s two year anniversary, but given November’s busy release schedule am not sure how much time I’ll end up having to get it done. At the very least though, I’ll try and throw together some updates on trophy site numbers to get a better understanding of player base growth over the past two years. Without a better idea of how many copies the game sold in its first few weeks, however, that likely won’t help much when it comes to trying to pinpoint an exact total. I could perhaps compare to some other games for that, although would need to find a few with recently confirmed PS4 sales totals which isn’t always easy.

As for the figures, my first impression was also that 600k seemed way too high, but, on reflection, I don’t think it’s at all beyond the realms of possibility. Iirc, during the first annual Embracer conference after S3’s release, the Embracer CEO revealed that Metro Exodus had shifted more than half a million copies on Steam - and at that point it had only been on sale for a couple of days. With that in mind, could a game that’s been available for the best part of a year (not to mention one that’s been on sale for as little as $5 at times) have achieved the same feat? I definitely think so.

Steam DB is pretty useless for getting total player counts since Valve decided to set people’s profiles to private by default. I think they use some sort of extrapolation method these days, which, like Gamstat, becomes increasingly inaccurate the smaller the game is. It’s also reliant on people actually playing the game, which playtracker suggests the overwhelming majority of people who own the game haven’t done. Considering it’s been heavily discounted and sold as part of bundles, I can absolutely see this being the case (I have hundreds of games on Steam that I still haven’t gotten around to playing myself).

All that said, I do have quite a few questions about playtracker’s methodology, which is poorly explained at best. Ultimately though, I find it difficulty to see how they could be so far out, particularly when a lot of their other figures seem fairly on the nose. Of course, the same argument could be made of sites like SteamDB and Gamstat, although it’s a lot easier to see the flaws in their methodologies as they do a much better job of explaining them.

Always appreciate your analysis and insight brother. Whenever you get some free time, an updated breakdown of these data sources and speculation on sales figures would be awesome.

 

[WuyingRen]

With the anime launching in just a few days, I thought it might be nice to take stock of the current performance of the first three games on PlayStation in order to get an idea of whether there’s any obvious growth in total player numbers in the weeks and months after the anime. I’ll be using the below numbers (taken today) as a benchmark.

Shenmue 1
PSN Profiles: 26,041
PSN Trophy Leaders: 23,368
TrueTrophies: 14,144

Shenmue 2
PSN Profiles: 13,930
PSN Trophy Leaders: 12,592
TrueTrophies: 7,499

Shenmue 3
PSN Profiles: 6,745
PSN Trophy Leaders: 7,382
TrueTrophies: 4,999

For those wondering, the last stats I have for Shenmue 3 are from August 14, 2021. Back then, PSN Profiles had 6,023 tracked users and PSN Trophy Leaders had 6,715. This would indicate an increase in the tracked players of somewhere between 10 and 12%. Not great for almost six months of growth, but not atrocious considering the game is now more than two years old.

Once the anime has finished airing I’ll probably throw all this data into a table just to get a better understanding of how the game has performed over time. That way we’ll also be able to use trend lines to determine how much of an impact (if any) the anime has on sales.

 

[Alex banana]

I would have thought that having a normal price and then making sure it's included in every big sale would be better for maximum exposure, but what do I know? Perhaps it hasn't sold that well in sales previously.

 

[WuyingRen]

With the anime launching in just a few days, I thought it might be nice to take stock of the current performance of the first three games on PlayStation in order to get an idea of whether there’s any obvious growth in total player numbers in the weeks and months after the anime. I’ll be using the below numbers (taken today) as a benchmark.

Shenmue 1
PSN Profiles: 26,041
PSN Trophy Leaders: 23,368
TrueTrophies: 14,144

Shenmue 2
PSN Profiles: 13,930
PSN Trophy Leaders: 12,592
TrueTrophies: 7,499

Shenmue 3
PSN Profiles: 6,745
PSN Trophy Leaders: 7,382
TrueTrophies: 4,999

For those wondering, the last stats I have for Shenmue 3 are from August 14, 2021. Back then, PSN Profiles had 6,023 tracked users and PSN Trophy Leaders had 6,715. This would indicate an increase in the tracked players of somewhere between 10 and 12%. Not great for almost six months of growth, but not atrocious considering the game is now more than two years old.

Once the anime has finished airing I’ll probably throw all this data into a table just to get a better understanding of how the game has performed over time. That way we’ll also be able to use trend lines to determine how much of an impact (if any) the anime has on sales.

I've been a little busy this past month or two and so haven't had a chance to circle back to this, but with Shenmue 3 now available on some of the upper tiers of PS Plus, I wanted to get this done before the figures end up getting too skewed. Likewise, taking another reading now will hopefully give us a half-decent indication as to how many people check out Shenmue 3 for free on PS Plus. Anyway. Without further adieu, the numbers...

Shenmue 1
PSN Profiles: 26,041 -> 27,335 (+5%)
PSN Trophy Leaders: 23,368 -> 25,154 (+7.6%)
TrueTrophies: 14,144 -> 13,924 (-1.6%)

Shenmue 2
PSN Profiles: 13,930 -> 14,610 (+4.9%)
PSN Trophy Leaders: 12,592 -> 13,508 (+7.3%)
TrueTrophies: 7,499 -> 7,440 (-0.8%)

Shenmue 3
PSN Profiles: 6,745 -> 7,289 (+8.1%)
PSN Trophy Leaders: 7,382 -> 7,946 (+7.6%)
TrueTrophies: 4,999 -> 4,995 (-0.1%)

The first thing that jumps out is the data from TrueTrophies, which actually shows a small drop in the total number of players for all three games. As far as I can tell, this is down to the site losing a fairly significant chunk of its members at some point over the past few months, rendering the data gathered over that period pretty useless. Thankfully, however, the other two sites show a positive trend from which we can glean some useful information.

In particular, the data from PSN Trophy Leaders was incredibly consistent, with all three games receiving an increase of between 7.3% and 7.6% in the number of total players. The PSN Profiles data for the first two games is also surprisingly consistent (+5% and +4.9%), though they show a much larger increase for Shenmue 3 (8.1%). I wonder whether the latter may have something to do with the game coming to PS Plus, but this is little more than speculation on my part at this time.

On paper, these figures do look good, but it's important to note that this period covers 4 and a half months (February 2nd - June 19), so a certain level of growth was to be expected anyway. In fact, we've previously seen much larger growth spurts over similar time periods, with Shenmue 3 having seen growth of around 17% on both PSN Profiles and PSN Trophy Leaders between January and June of 2021. The game then saw another 5%-7% boost in total players over the two months that followed, driven largely by a deep discount in one of the big PSN sales. Even the six-month period leading up to the anime's debut saw around twice as much growth (as detailed in my original post).

While I'm fairly certain that the anime has helped to attract new fans to the franchise as a whole, the data seems to suggest that very few of those people were interested enough to check out the games. I suppose it's possible that anime viewers are more likely to be PC gamers and that the games have seen a huge boost in players on Steam, but a cursory glance at SteamSpy data (which, to be fair, can be a little patchy) would suggest that this probably isn't the case. The fact that the games are all a full year older than they were in June of 2021 also won't have helped, but the growth (or lack thereof) remains a little disappointing nonetheless.