Did not know about Homefront one. I am just on the pessimistic side nowadays so my position is to not expct anything and in that case if they pull it off I will be gladly surprisedand be delighted to see that Yu/Ys net/Deep Silver/whoever publishes Shenmue4 is able to sell the value of the brand and sign deals.You say that yet WHITE CASTLE agreed to be in Homefront when no product placement had ever been in any Call of Duty, Metal of Honor, Gears of War, or Battlefield game (much bigger and more historically well known FPS franchises).
I mean, it shouldnt have been hard to acquire product placement for Call of Duty seeing as how successful the IP has been, but one of the only games of it I played: Modern Warfare 2, I clearly remember a "Burger Town" in there that I always felt could easily have been Burger King, McDonalds, or White Castle. Clearly the former two probably wanted nothing to do with a violent FPS, but somehow White Castle had no problem with Homefront.
Homefront was even a new IP, unlike Shenmue, and so that deemed a bigger risk. Yet they did it.
I specifically pointed out Coca-Cola and Timex because both were previously in Shenmue games.
Theres probably other examples, but I dont recall at the moment.
I know there was Sunotory alcohol drink advertised in Virtua Fighter 5 fighting game in an ad in one of the street stages.
also, where are you coming up with those product placement fee numbers?
And about the numbers and fees, i probably would have stated more clearly that those were a bit of speculation as numbers are obviously not public. However, the gamasutra article for example ranges it to few thousands to hundreds of thousands depending of the deal, and combined with the film statistics that suggests the average is in the ~22k is how I generated those numbers.
I just wanted to do the exercice that Yakuza 6 could well be reaching the 0.5M mark on ads alone de-risking the development which Shenmue could also try to use as a financial investment when we have the elements of having a clear defined target audience and the game is based in real like environments which it makes easier to place those kind of product placements.