Where are the stats for FFVII?
Shenmue pioneered a ton of things for its time, not to mention took up an entire floor of SEGA, and had anywhere from 200 - 300 people working on it at any given time for five - seven years, with a lot of crazy overtime and sleeping at the studio. Also had a lot of big names from SEGA working in it, like Toshihiro Nagoshi and Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and part of Amusement Vision even jumped in at the last minute, I believe.
You mention marketing...I think a lot of people think that Shenmue wasn't marketed because they personally never heard of it at the time. I would venture to say that it is still probably on of SEGA's most marketed games of all time, considering they rented out the Pacifico Yokohama for multiple days with [probably B celebrity] hosts:
https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/12/21/shenmue-premiere-the-full-report
Then you mention the multiple prototyping and reworking on the Saturn and subsequent restart on the Dreamcast, the research and travel to China, the 1000 plus fully voice acted and subtitled characters in two different languages, the television spots that were made, the multiple events from 1998 - 2002 where they drug Yu Suzuki, development team members, and the voice actors in character and uniform all over creation. You also have many unique trailers from the two games in different regions of the world, almost full motion capture for everything, even picking up items, bringing people from the cinema industry in to advise, the off site working dinners with said advisers that were held regularly...we also don't know if the cost of Shenmue The Movie might be included in marketing for Shenmue I. There was also designing and maintenance of the Passport's online features, where they had competitions for the high scores and fastest times on the game's ranked activities, and gave out prizes like huge framed pictures of characters signed by Yu Suzuki with special certificates. They made mousepads, notebooks, notepads, soundtracks, posters, clear files, mugs, watches, pamphlets, cardboard standees, demos, guidebooks, statues, calendars, clothing, artbooks, trading cards, magazine features, digital screensavers, avatars, and wallpapers, and more to promote the game. There were over a thousand unique music tracks composed by probably ten or more composers with names like Yuzo Koshiro involved. Some tracks were even recorded and performed live by famous musicians at events like the Premiere, and the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra even recorded a few for the game and its soundtrack. SEGA Germany even commissioned a famous artist to make some limited edition official Shenmue Dreamcasts with Ryo painted on them. All of that adds up.
Not to mention that we know for a fact that the story itself is at least written in novel form to its end, at least in the The Legend Of Akira books. The magic weather system incorporated the real weather data from the entire timeline Shenmue I is set in. And all of those ~1100 characters from both games? Each have their own unique biography, height, weight, blood type, age, and unique name stylized after real Japanese and Chinese names.
I would bet both of my arms that little to no marketing costs were included in that $47 or $70 million figure.
EDIT: We also didn't mention that the main characters were sculpted into character busts, then drawn and illustrated, then modeled multiple times. Some even had multiple variations, like Lan Di, Fuku - san, Ryo, etc. Yu mentions in the Project Berkeley video and other places that he did a lot of experimental things as well with the team, like having them design things based on the music they heard, for example. Doesn't seem to be a thing that would happen with Sonic 1 or Super Mario World.
EDIT 2: Don't forget about the Timex, Coca Cola, Sumitomo Bank, Hitachi, Sapporo, SEGA, etc. tie ins...these took more time to develop, as they worked with the original SEGA teams to capture their character capsule toys, and had to even rework the placement of all of the Coke vending machines because Coke didn't initially approve of how they were placed. Yes, they likely made money off of those product placements, I would bet it wasn't cheap to implement with the culture of perfection that Yu Suzuki and the Shenmue team had built.
EDIT 3: They also partnered with that artist for the "You're My Only" single to promote the game in Japan.
The game(s) also took part in numerous trade shows and other events: E3, TGS, Network Jungle, SEGA Game Jam, AM2 Summer Tour, and the Tokyo Metro Stamp Rally, and the aforementioned Shenmue Premiere and Shenmue The Movie Premiere.
