Was there ever a chance of Sega being involved with S3?

[jabberwok]

Apologies if this is common knowledge, I'm fairly new to the site, and the series. I did try to search a bit first.

I don't typically care about publishers, but Sega's iconography was such a big part of the first two games, and I kind of miss it in 3. And it would've been so nice to have some Sega arcade games in there somewhere. Even seems like the same company that did the Genesis collection made the S1 & 2 remaster. Not to mention the funding they could've poured into the project.

I assume they just weren't interested? That seems crazy to me, though. I know S3 is kind of niche, but it seems like a larger budget would've changed that.

 

[RetroLord120]

Sega is scared to take risks these days. That's pretty much it

 

[Spaghetti]

I mean they were involved because they had to allow Yu Suzuki the use of the IP, which is quite extraordinary in and of itself, and speaks generally to how much pull Yu still has at SEGA and that they had no real intention of using the IP themselves. Had they not provided Yu the licence, Shenmue III wouldn't have happened, neither would Shenmue I & II, nor perhaps even the anime.

Short of any other realistic options, things had to happen roughly like this to revive the series, and for what it's worth SEGA are now taking a bigger active interest in the IP. Will that extend to their cooperation on a new entry, or is the anime about as far as they'll go? We'll have to see.

 

[jabberwok]

I mean they were involved because they had to allow Yu Suzuki the use of the IP, which is quite extraordinary in and of itself, and speaks generally to how much pull Yu still has at SEGA and that they had no real intention of using the IP themselves. Had they not provided Yu the licence, Shenmue III wouldn't have happened, neither would Shenmue I & II, nor perhaps even the anime.

Short of any other realistic options, things had to happen roughly like this to revive the series, and for what it's worth SEGA are now taking a bigger active interest in the IP. Will that extend to their cooperation on a new entry, or is the anime about as far as they'll go? We'll have to see.

Yeah, true. And I'm not that surprised that they are risk averse, like most companies, when it comes to funding. I actually don't know this, but I guess I'm also assuming that Sega not being involved is why we didn't get things like the capsule toys and arcade cabinets from other IPs of theirs. Seems like providing access to that stuff wouldn't carry the same risk as actually having to fund the game. But then again, I suppose their might be other complications, or maybe Suzuki just didn't feel like including that stuff. I don't know how he feels about them these days.

I hope they get involved in carrying the series forward, which feels weird to say. But I do miss the cheesy shilling for Sega in the early games.

 

[orient]

I think the decade plus that SEGA did absolutely nothing with the IP sums it up. SEGA Japan wanted to take no risks with Shenmue after S2 flopped on Xbox and Shenmue Online failed to come to fruition. They trust Yu with his own baby, but not enough to put money behind him.

The Shenmue I & II re-release was the work of SEGA Europe, with very little help from SEGA Japan.

You'd like to think with the relative success of the re-release, and with the anime on the way, SEGA would be more open to supporting Shenmue in the future. But unless the anime is a smash hit, I really wouldn't count on it, personally.