Here's what I surmised so far (correct me if I'm wrong on any parts):
Shenmue was backed by fans to the Kickstarter amount of 6.3 million.
And additional 700k was crowdfunded by slacker backers after the fact.
That brings the total amount to 7 million.
Obviously since many of those backers contributed more than say just either $29 (for a digital pc purchase) or $60 (physical purchase), the numbers that would all equate to retail sales wise is off.
We do know that the original Shenmue sold 1.2 million copies worldwide, still an impressive number for its time considering as long running the Yakuza series is, not one of its games ever hit that close, and the XBox version of Shenmue 2, which was not released in Japan btw, sold for something around 30k sales.
So this means not everyone who bought those games contributed to the kickstarter.
Recently in a Famitsu interview, Yu Suzuki confirmed the total budget for Shenmue 3 was around 12 million
We know the following companies helped Ys Net:
Sony (promotion and marketing)
Koch Media (promotion and marketing)
Deep Silver (publisher)
Shibuya Productions (co-producer)
Epic (helping with development with UE4)
We know SEGA didn't do anything other than allow Ys Net to use the Shenmue 3 license. They got no licensing fees or put any SEGA games into Shenmue 3; the most being nostalgic nods to some of Yu's past Sega games and some Sega merchandise like Virtua Fighter 1&3 posters, Space Harrier posters, Astro City arcade cabinets, capsule models of Hang on and Sega Saturn, and use of Shenmue 1&2 footage as well as some of its music and some of Afterburner music.
We know that Epic contributed 3 million late into the project in turn for a one year PC exclusivity through Epic Game Store, which did not exist until 2018, three years after Shenmue was revealed and kickstarted in 2015.
This means that out of that 12 million, 7 million was from fans, 3 million was from Epic, so that leaves 2 million.
That 2 million investment can be assumed to be from Sony, Koch Media, Deep Silver and Shibuya Productions.
Now if we were to hypothetically say each one of those 4 companies put in an equal share of investment towards that 2 million, then that would mean they each contributed 500k. Of course we don't know if its 'equal share investments' but whatever.
So this means they'd obviously want a return on that investment regardless of the actual size for each of those 4 companies.
So it wouldnt be far off to say they'd want to see double their investment (so take the 2 million and multiply it by two which would then be 4 million)
4 million would be about 70 to 100k copies sold (outside what was sold from the KS of course) when you subtract distribution costs as such.
In regards to sales, we don't know actual global figures yet, other than some tracking #'s for Europe, Amazon etc, but in Japan, via Famitsu Sales estimates, we learned that while Shenmue was the #1 opening game of its week (11/18/19 - 11/24/19) with a sales amounf of somewhere 17,857 sales, putting it in at #4 in the top 10 list.
However, the following week (11/26/19 - 12/01/19), it completely fell off that list entirely, and even plummeted further down beyond the top 30 list, with that week's 30th game's sales being Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu for Nintendo Switch, tracking in at 2,267 units sold by 12/1/2019.
So this leads me to believe the number there for Shenmue 3 is probably somewhere around 20k sales so far in Japan.
Of course this is for physical game sales only, and so there's also digital sales which is not the same as the distribution costs of selling and shipping physical media, however it should be noted Sony takes 30%. (Steam does too, but they wont be a factor until a year from now so they're a moot point)
While digital sales are not as popular as physical sales in Japan; they should still not be ignored.
Plus we know the West has adopted digital media much more than the East in this regard.
There's also the DLC season pass profits to consider (as well as Sony and Epic's cut on them (30% and 8%)
Then there's Epic's 3 million investment that wants a return on it. Of course, being on EGS, Epic takes their 8% cut in addition to whatever fees they charged for using UE4.
Therefore I estimate at best case scenario for all parties to get their investments back with a profit, the game outside of KS sales, needs to sell globally anywhere from 300 to 350k sales which includes physical and digital and DLC season passes.
Of course we also have to remember a lot of the purchases were higher than the $60 as many of them were deluxe editions as such.
Though the Black Friday sale also brought the base price down a bit like the Best Buy sale of $35 as well as some other retail stores but we dont know yet if that either hurt it or helped it...
Lastly, I want to say despite a lot of doom and gloom here early on, care to remember Square-Enix's investment of the Tomb Raider franchise had them invest 100 million in development towards Tomb Raider 2013; a reboot of the series.
That game within its first 3 months, failed to make back that investment, prompting to push Square-Enix to publicly say it was a failure (along with Sleeping Dogs and Hitman: Absolution).
However, over the course of a year, even before the game got ported to PS4/XB1, the overall sales jumped to somewhere around 9 million, more than returning its investment (need about 5 million copies sold to break even on a 100 million investment), and then went further on to acquiring another 2 million or so when it got ported so clearly Tomb Raider was a slow burn but a well invested one.
Not saying Shenmue is going to be like that exactly, but that some games, not all, as in the example of Tomb Raider 2013, make their money slower than others even though most games make most of their profits within the first month as they say.
So, a lot of things to consider here....
trust me, more and more developers will provide temporary exclusives to the Epic Store. And it's not a bad thing at all, in fact Steam's already adapting and trying to lower the share they require from sales... anyway we'll see. A game like Satisfactory sold more than 500,000 copies on Epic Store in one year, and I don't think it had the same appeal as Shenmue.
