Except that it isn't when your "educated guess" is passed off as absolute fact and nothing else can pierce through its armor. Seems to be a pattern. "It won't get that much" may be 100% correct, but you don't know that, none of us do. The only real data we have besides one week of Spain and Japan is the fact that the publisher said it "performed in line with management expectations", and "financially, it did fine", and that it was "principal revenue driver for Deep SIlver in Q4 2019". You'd think some of you trying to spin everything negatively would tackle those
facts, but I guess not.
EDIT: Let's dive in a little deeper. We don't know what numbers Shenmue III produced, we just know that it at least broke even, if what the CEO of Embracer (owns Koch Media, who owns Deep Silver) said has merit. Which it...kind of does. Read the first page here:
https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index.php?threads/sales-of-shenmue-iii-where-are-we-now.2735/
Those are some solid numbers. Now, if we take the Japanese chart numbers, Kickstarter numbers, Spain numbers, and CE numbers, we have an estimated total of 96,360 copies sold.
That is not an educated guess, it is a solid number.
We have some charts, we have some things being thrown around like "it wasn't on the PSN's digital top whatever", but what does that mean? Nothing really, it's kind of a red herring to some who are for some reason thinking the sales HAVE to be bad news and want others to feel the same. Now, the other numbers...
Sony says PS4 has surpassed 100 million sales. Let's just say that out of the Kickstarter copies, PS4 took up 50% of them (I think it is likely much higher), which gives us 33,534 copies, rounded down. Combined with the very limited sales data, we now have 62,825 copies. That is about 0.06% of the PS4 install base, fully knowing that the copies of Shenmue III sold are guaranteed to be higher, as is the PS4 install base.
Now:
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/steam-one-billion-accounts-1203201159/
Steam is said to have 1 billion accounts and 90 million active users. If the same percentage of people that I calculated above bought Shenmue III on Steam, that'd still give us 56,542 copies sold, rounded down. Imagine there were 6,542 human beings that actually pledged to not buy Shenmue III due to the Epic deal scarring their lives, and we're still down to 50,000.
The numbers above, while STILL being higher than the 50,000 you scoffed at, don't take into account anything from Epic, anything digital outside of Kickstarter, or any physical copies sold past one week each of Spain, Japan, and the limited editions. That means counting NOTHING from North America or Europe, outside of one week of Spanish physical sales and whatever the number of copies those locations bought of the limited editions. You really think Shenmue III won't move 50,000 off Steam? I'm perfectly willing to say anything possible, from that to this game being the next Valkyria Chronicles and becoming a sleeper hit:
https://www.shacknews.com/article/87119/valkyria-chronicles-for-pc-reaches-top-spot-in-steam-sales
EDIT INCOMING