Shenmue IV Will Happen - Here's Why!

[Telekill]

Imagine if Sega were smart and instead of Heyenas had opted to back Shenmue 4 at full AAA scale. Imagine if they used more of that wasted money to ressurect Comix Zone a la Strees of Rage 4, or Ecco the Dolphin, or Crazy Taxi. We'd be praising Sega for getting back to its roots. Instead... we have our current timeline of bad decisions. *sigh

 

[WuyingRen]

Imagine if Sega were smart and instead of Heyenas had opted to back Shenmue 4 at full AAA scale.

This would not have been smart. Quite the opposite, in fact. Had Hyenas paid off it could have made Sega hundreds of millions of dollars. Conversely, all three Shenmue games have failed to recoup their budgets (Deep Silver got their money back thanks to the Epic deal, but not every investor did) and there’s nothing to suggest that a fourth Shenmue game will perform any better. At best, they’d likely be looking at a very small profit.

I’d love for Sega to fund another Shenmue game, but doing so would be incredibly risky with very little reward, even at a AA scale. Hyenas was probably the right play, but like most recent Sega projects, it was horrendously mismanaged.

 

[Telekill]

This would not have been smart. Quite the opposite, in fact. Had Hyenas paid off it could have made Sega hundreds of millions of dollars. Conversely, all three Shenmue games have failed to recoup their budgets (Deep Silver got their money back thanks to the Epic deal, but not every investor did) and there’s nothing to suggest that a fourth Shenmue game will perform any better. At best, they’d likely be looking at a very small profit.

I’d love for Sega to fund another Shenmue game, but doing so would be incredibly risky with very little reward, even at a AA scale. Hyenas was probably the right play, but like most recent Sega projects, it was horrendously mismanaged.

Ah... but look at it through the lense of hindsight. We know the fate of Hyenas. We know it didn't pay off and that $100 million was tossed in the trash, getting Sega and no other investors any return, whatsoever.

Had Sega gone all in on Shenmue 4, there'd have been no reason to cancel it near the finish line because there'd be no maintenance costs. They'd release it to recoup some of the budget and you know who would win, even if Sega didn't make back all its developement costs? We, the Shenmue fans would have won. We'd have a continuation to the story if not a conclusion to the story.... Sega be damned.

 

[Sonoshee]

Do y’all think shenmue 4 is in development?

Just asking the question once is sufficient. People can read through the thread and quote your post if need be.

 

[Sonoshee]

Ah... but look at it through the lense of hindsight. We know the fate of Hyenas. We know it didn't pay off and that $100 million was tossed in the trash, getting Sega and no other investors any return, whatsoever.

Had Sega gone all in on Shenmue 4, there'd have been no reason to cancel it near the finish line because there'd be no maintenance costs. They'd release it to recoup some of the budget and you know who would win, even if Sega didn't make back all its developement costs? We, the Shenmue fans would have won. We'd have a continuation to the story if not a conclusion to the story.... Sega be damned.

Not sure taking the piss out of people who have a valid opinion about Sega's handling of its IPs (and Shenmue) is really the way to go.

 

[WuyingRen]

Ah... but look at it through the lense of hindsight. We know the fate of Hyenas. We know it didn't pay off and that $100 million was tossed in the trash, getting Sega and no other investors any return, whatsoever.

Had Sega gone all in on Shenmue 4, there'd have been no reason to cancel it near the finish line because there'd be no maintenance costs. They'd release it to recoup some of the budget and you know who would win, even if Sega didn't make back all its developement costs? We, the Shenmue fans would have won. We'd have a continuation to the story if not a conclusion to the story.... Sega be damned.

If we’re going to look at things through the lens of hindsight, one could argue that Sega should never have funded the first two Shenmue games and instead given the money to Nagoshi to work on the Yakuza franchise right from the get-go.

Had Sega gone all in on Yakuza back in the nineties, the Dreamcast may have sold better and Sega might still be making consoles to this day. Better still, we the Shenmue fans would have never played the games and thus would not have spent fifteen years waiting for a sequel nor been left facing more uncertainty some four years later.

Personally though, I believe that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all (I think that still applies here).

 

[Sonoshee]

Had Sega gone all in on Yakuza back in the nineties, the Dreamcast may have sold better and Sega might still be making consoles to this day.

I somehow doubt that. Yakuza didn't set the charts alight when it first released, I doubt that would have been the case on the Dreamcast either.

 

[Telekill]

If we’re going to look at things through the lens of hindsight, one could argue that Sega should never have funded the first two Shenmue games and instead given the money to Nagoshi to work on the Yakuza franchise right from the get-go.

Had Sega gone all in on Yakuza back in the nineties, the Dreamcast may have sold better and Sega might still be making consoles to this day. Better still, we the Shenmue fans would have never played the games and thus would not have spent fifteen years waiting for a sequel nor been left facing more uncertainty some four years later.

Personally though, I believe that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all (I think that still applies here).

But was Yakuza even thought up during the Dreamcast era? I thought the first game was mid-PS2 gen?

 

[WuyingRen]

I somehow doubt that. Yakuza didn't set the charts alight when it first released, I doubt that would have been the case on the Dreamcast either.

By the time the first Yakuza game was released, GTA 3 was already a thing. Plus, iirc, the first few games didn’t have English voice acting, nor was the budget anywhere near as high as Shenmue 1 and 2 (although I suspect a lot of the R&D costs that were sunk into Shenmue paid dividends when the time came to make Yakuza).

Had Yakuza released in 1999 with English voice acting and bit more polish, I’d wager it could have been a massive hit, though of course, we’ll never know for certain. What we do know though is that Shenmue was not a massive hit, at least not commercially. This is why looking at things in hindsight is kinda pointless, unless it’s to avoid making the same mistakes again in the future.

To be clear, as with Hyenas, I think that Sega backing Mr. Suzuki the way that they did was probably the right play. Like Hyenas, though, and many other failed projects, it just didn’t quite come off.

 

[thedemon1238]

No, no, no.... Yakuza 1 ps2 sales were 30 000 in USA and 20 000 in Europe in 2006. It was total disaster. They even hire hollywood actors for the roles.

Shenmue sold over 500 000 only in USA with install base of around 3-4 million consoles.

Yakuza sold 50 000 in the west with around 80-90 million ps2 consoles.

it was very rough start... It's all because Sammy's business is related to pachinko and gambling. Who owns that business in Japan? You know the answer. The special treatment for the Yakuza series has an explanation. Yakuza games sell well in Japan and make up for the failure in the west. This was until PS4's first Yakuza (which is port of ps3 game).... something magical happened in the west. Perfect timing or maybe there was nothing else to play on the PS4 or just keeping the series going for over 10 years opened people's eyes. Patience, persistence and the good work make an unbeatable combination for success.

 

[Zoyous]

Do y’all think shenmue 4 is in development?

Bro, no one knows for sure and it's driving everyone up the wall and that's why we've got a bunch of armchair CEO's and marketing experts here second-guessing things that happened over the past few weeks on back to decades ago. Things are gettin' spicy! As for me, if we don't hear anything by 2059, I'll start getting concerned.

But seriously I think within about the next 12 years we'll have sort of a PS1/Saturn-level emergence of realtime AI gaming and we'll all be occupied with generating our own games from simple text prompts. Now to clarify, I don't mean that the graphics will literally resemble PS1/Saturn graphics - just that we'll be seeing cohesive realtime AI-generated video, audio, and game logic that is somewhat rudimentary compared to what will come in 20-30 years, but good enough to be compelling to a mainstream audience.

By the way ahmed, a question for you - are you the source of the leaked audio clip?

 

[Sonoshee]

Had Yakuza released in 1999 with English voice acting and bit more polish, I’d wager it could have been a massive hit, though of course, we’ll never know for certain. What we do know though is that Shenmue was not a massive hit, at least not commercially. This is why looking at things in hindsight is kinda pointless, unless it’s to avoid making the same mistakes again in the future.

You're right. Shenmue was not a commercial hit, but then neither was Yakuza to begin with either.
Shenmue launched on an ultimately doomed console without much of an install base (as much as I love it, it's true, once the PS2 was announced that was it), whereas Yakuza launched on the PS2 which was far more successful and with much more of a player base. Doesn't matter how much development/promotional money Shenmue had behind it, it was never going to be a huge seller on the DC.
So let's say for arguments sake, Shenmue launched on the PS2 instead. Would it be Shenmue getting yearly instalments instead of Yakuza?
Or is it just that you believe deep down that Shenmue isn't really as good as Yakuza (you wagered that it'd be a massive hit on a console without much of an install base) and whatever Shenmue was given to try and make it successful would ultimately have failed? Honest question, I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative.

 

[WuyingRen]

You're right. Shenmue was not a commercial hit, but then neither was Yakuza to begin with either.
Shenmue launched on an ultimately doomed console without much of an install base (as much as I love it, it's true, once the PS2 was announced that was it), whereas Yakuza launched on the PS2 which was far more successful and with much more of a player base. Doesn't matter how much development/promotional money Shenmue had behind it, it was never going to be a huge seller on the DC.
So let's say for arguments sake, Shenmue launched on the PS2 instead. Would it be Shenmue getting yearly instalments instead of Yakuza?
Or is it just that you believe deep down that Shenmue isn't really as good as Yakuza (you wagered that it'd be a massive hit on a console without much of an install base) and whatever Shenmue was given to try and make it successful would ultimately have failed? Honest question, I'm not trying to be difficult or argumentative.

These are all fair points, so no need to justify making them.

I definitely think that Shenmue would have performed much better if it had been a launch title for the PS2 or if the Dreamcast had had a larger install base. Iirc, the proportion of Dreamcast owners who bought Shenmue was higher than the proportion of PS2 owners who bought San Andreas, which was the best-selling game on the system. There being ten times more potential players probably wouldn’t have led to ten times as many copies being sold, but it would certainly have made a massive difference.

Yakuza’s initial failure is a bit of a moot point here though, as by the time it made its way west in late 2006, we already had all three of what’s now become known as the GTA 3D trilogy, not to mention a whole host of GTA clones like Saints Row and True Crime. Had it arrived seven years earlier, things would likely have been very different today. Who knows. We might even be calling GTA a Yakuza clone.

I don’t think that the Yakuza games are better than Shenmue (for whatever it’s worth, I’m not really a fan of them myself), but I do think that Yakuza is more of a mass market product, as Mr. Wingfors would say.

GTA 3 showed that open-world games centered around crime and violence had huge mass market appeal around the turn of the century, so had Yakuza beaten it to the punch, I think it would have comfortably outsold Shenmue on the Dreamcast and possibly even been the system seller that Sega had been hoping for. Again though, we’ll never know for sure.

 

[ahmed_alency7]

Bro, no one knows for sure and it's driving everyone up the wall and that's why we've got a bunch of armchair CEO's and marketing experts here second-guessing things that happened over the past few weeks on back to decades ago. Things are gettin' spicy! As for me, if we don't hear anything by 2059, I'll start getting concerned.

But seriously I think within about the next 12 years we'll have sort of a PS1/Saturn-level emergence of realtime AI gaming and we'll all be occupied with generating our own games from simple text prompts. Now to clarify, I don't mean that the graphics will literally resemble PS1/Saturn graphics - just that we'll be seeing cohesive realtime AI-generated video, audio, and game logic that is somewhat rudimentary compared to what will come in 20-30 years, but good enough to be compelling to a mainstream audience.

By the way ahmed, a question for you - are you the source of the leaked audio clip?

No i’m not what the heck

 

[spud1897]

While Yakzua had shitty Western sales it was a general success in Japan. I think it sold around 800k copies in total with most of them being in Japan.

Most of the sales stats are in the Shenmue v Yakuza Podcast we did.

 

[Suzaku]

No, no, no.... Yakuza 1 ps2 sales were 30 000 in USA and 20 000 in Europe in 2006. It was total disaster. They even hire hollywood actors for the roles.

Shenmue sold over 500 000 only in USA with install base of around 3-4 million consoles.

Yakuza sold 50 000 in the west with around 80-90 million ps2 consoles.

it was very rough start... It's all because Sammy's business is related to pachinko and gambling. Who owns that business in Japan? You know the answer. The special treatment for the Yakuza series has an explanation. Yakuza games sell well in Japan and make up for the failure in the west. This was until PS4's first Yakuza (which is port of ps3 game).... something magical happened in the west. Perfect timing or maybe there was nothing else to play on the PS4 or just keeping the series going for over 10 years opened people's eyes. Patience, persistence and the good work make an unbeatable combination for success.

exactly
imagine if sega had the same persistence and patience with Shenmue...

Now there would be Sonic, Yakuza, Shenmue and Persona as their pillars.

 

[Suzaku]

While Yakzua had shitty Western sales it was a general success in Japan. I think it sold around 800k copies in total with most of them being in Japan.

Most of the sales stats are in the Shenmue v Yakuza Podcast we did.

You mean Yakuza 1?
We should also mention that it reached 800k in at least 2-3 years iirc, with multiple budget releases.

My old post with the official japanese numbers for Yakuza:

https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index.php?threads/segasammy-should-take-back-shenmue.2823/page-4#post-94128

"2005
-Yakuza 1 - 232.650 copies total at the end of the year

2006
-Yakuza 1 - 345.323 copies total at the end of the year
etc.

"Yakuza 1 (3 releases, lifetime sales from 2005 to 2008): 883.179 copies"

 

[Dietsoap]

You mean Yakuza 1?
We should also mention that it reached 800k in at least 2-3 years iirc, with multiple budget releases.

My old post with the official japanese numbers for Yakuza:

https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index.php?threads/segasammy-should-take-back-shenmue.2823/page-4#post-94128

"2005
-Yakuza 1 - 232.650 copies total at the end of the year

2006
-Yakuza 1 - 345.323 copies total at the end of the year
etc.

"Yakuza 1 (3 releases, lifetime sales from 2005 to 2008): 883.179 copies"

That makes it seem like it got a big retrospective boost from the success of the sequel.

 

[Valascaziel]

I think we're a ways from A.I. being used to create things in gaming, but not that far off.

The implications of A.I. are staggering, not to mention quite scary. It has the potential to destroy the lives of those who make their livings providing voices. There will need to be rules and regulations set forth on how it can be used.

We've already seen A.I. replication of celebrity voices or even those passed on.

I heard one recently of a political commentator and it was nigh-indistinguishable from the person himself. And rumor has it Paul McCartney used it to release one final song with his former Beatle members "resurrected" via A.I...I don't think it's out yet, though.


Strange times.

 

[Zoyous]

I think we're a ways from A.I. being used to create things in gaming, but not that far off.

The implications of A.I. are staggering, not to mention quite scary. It has the potential to destroy the lives of those who make their livings providing voices. There will need to be rules and regulations set forth on how it can be used.

I mean, I guess you could say there needed to be rules and regulations to protect the jobs of people involved in steam locomotives as well, but that didn't happen. The only people with the means to protect their position are the richest people, as usual.

As far as AI-generated gaming, we're already at the point where a Myst-like game comprised mostly of still, pre-rendered images could be largely machine-generated. AI can help with coding, though it does make mistakes and needs to be checked and corrected. We have multiple services for generating 3-second pre-calculated video clips, and we've been discussing voice and sound effects with regard to the "leaked" audio clip. Single images around 1024x1024 can be generated within a few seconds, then upscaled in a few seconds more. Midjourney is expected to roll out their 3D feature some time soon, which will not be for generating polygonal meshes but is expected instead to generate an image of a space that you can adjust the camera angle and position and it will be able to keep the setting and details consistent via the combination of prompt and seed value as it re-generates a new image.

Figuring on roughly doubling computing power every 18 months or so, I can see early-gen realtime AI-generated gaming in 12-15 years provided through streaming services. It won't be necessary for teams of technical artists to model, texture, rig, and light scenes when a single person can lay out the stage with grey boxes and provide a descriptive prompt for the AI agents to generate the polished scene. It won't be the end of game development based on 3D polygons but it will eventually marginalize it just as pixel art has been marginalized. Everyone will become an auteur director, battling for attention among an unprecedented surge of stunning creations coming from everyone else.