"Shenmue isn't popular in Japan"

Joined
Feb 9, 2020
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UK
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Shenmue
Can I just dispel this myth.

Shenmue isn't popular in Japan just means, Japanese fans don't interact with Western media.

Even if sales are less then NA or Europe, I think Japan still has a solid fanbase, it's just it's invisible to us.
 
Copying and pasting my response from another thread...
Shenmue 1 DC - 32% of total sales were in Japan (380,000 / 1,180,000).
Shenmue 2 DC Xbox - 32% of total sales were in Japan in spite of Xbox having practically zero presence here (150,000 / 470,000).
Shenmue 1/2 HD - 25% of week 1 console sales were in Japan (37,500 / 145,000). Worth noting these are PS4 only sales for Japan as barely anybody has an Xbox One here in Japan.
Shenmue 3 - Japan was the only major country in which the game broke the top ten. Gamestat estimates that 22% of all players on PS4 are based in Japan but also insists that their database has poor coverage in Japan meaning this number is likely higher.

For a country with 1.6% of the world’s population (126m / 7.8bn) to have 20%+ of sales would suggest that it’s pretty popular relative to the rest of the world.
 
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Copying and pasting my response from another thread...
Shenmue 1 DC - 32% of total sales were in Japan (380,000 / 1,180,000).
Shenmue 2 DC Xbox - 32% of total sales were in Japan in spite of Xbox having practically zero presence here (150,000 / 470,000).
Shenmue 1/2 HD - 25% of week 1 console sales were in Japan (37,500 / 145,000). Worth noting these are PS4 only sales for Japan as barely anybody has an Xbox One here in Japan.
Shenmue 3 - Japan was the only major country in which the game broke the top ten. Gamestat estimates that 22% of all players on PS4 are based in Japan but also insists that their database has poor coverage in Japan meaning this number is likely higher.

For a country with 1.6% of the world’s population (126m / 7.8bn) to have 20%+ of sales would suggest that it’s pretty popular relative to the rest of the world.

Yes, but people say it's not popular there for some reason.
 
Copying and pasting my response from another thread...
Shenmue 1 DC - 32% of total sales were in Japan (380,000 / 1,180,000).
Shenmue 2 DC Xbox - 32% of total sales were in Japan in spite of Xbox having practically zero presence here (150,000 / 470,000).
Shenmue 1/2 HD - 25% of week 1 console sales were in Japan (37,500 / 145,000). Worth noting these are PS4 only sales for Japan as barely anybody has an Xbox One here in Japan.
Shenmue 3 - Japan was the only major country in which the game broke the top ten. Gamestat estimates that 22% of all players on PS4 are based in Japan but also insists that their database has poor coverage in Japan meaning this number is likely higher.

For a country with 1.6% of the world’s population (126m / 7.8bn) to have 20%+ of sales would suggest that it’s pretty popular relative to the rest of the world.

psst, it also help neither Shen 2 nor HD were released on XBOX in Japan ;)

i know you know this, only pointing out your wording is a bit confusing.

EDIT if anything it helps your argument for japan having a perfectly decent, proportionate fanbase for Shenmue. Approx 1/3 of the 3 major territories sounds logical to me.
 
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Copied from a post I made recently in another thread:

Of the reported 1.2 million sales from Shenmue I, it was pretty evenly split between Japan, North America, and Europe, as you can see here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050228083737/http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~hokora/english/dcchart.html
- @tomboz , out of curiosity, where do your numbers come from? This shows I sold more, and II sold less than what you said.)

Shenmue II, however, didn't fare too well. In the above chart, it had sold about 126k in Japan by 2003, but does include its budget "Dorikore" release, which came out March 6th. IIx charted number one in Europe: https://translate.google.com/transl...l&xid=25657,15700021,15700124,15700149,157001

And it also was reported to have sold 26k in the month of October, having released on October 28th: https://translate.google.com/transl...l&xid=25657,15700021,15700124,15700149,157001


With regards to why people believe that...not many Japanese fans on the forums or on 500k, which are two of the biggest communities for the game. That and people believe what they hear a lot of the times without doing research, like when someone says that Shenmue isn't popular in Japan...clearly isn't basing that off of much besides anecdotal evidence.
 
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