SEGAbits Shenmue III Hype Train! Update: Funded but lets go further!

[Aki-at]

Sega making money from this game, even though they didn't lift a finger to fund or develop it.
Thanks, Sega.

I have you know Mr SEGA put enormous effort in picking up his pen and signing the documentation to give Suzuki the license.

It is an extremely labour intrusive matter.

[George]

Yeah SEGA just put 80+ million dollars into the project, they don't deserve to own the IP.

[Tad]

Or 40. 80 always seemed ridiculous and wrong to me personally.

[George]

SO you think that SEGA spent 40 million on 2 games, the saturn prototype and marketing for his game?

[Centrale]

Just as a random thought... VR should (hopefully) be fairly well-established by the time this comes out. Gonna be nice wandering through the forests like that.

[Sharky]

Anyone good at gifs? This gif needs the barber QTE from Shenmue 2 put just before it:

[Tad]

SO you think that SEGA spent 40 million on 2 games, the saturn prototype and marketing for his game?

Nah, reckon they spent 20 on each dreamcast game. When Suzuki was asked, marketing etc was never mentioned. Just the games themselves.

[Berto]

Nah, reckon they spent 20 on each dreamcast game. When Suzuki was asked, marketing etc was never mentioned. Just the games themselves.

Or may be spent 20 on each dreamcast game, and 40 spent to make the engine for Shen Mue games?

[George]

Shenmue wasn't a cheap game to make, period. Let's not kid ourselves. I hope Yu Suzuki has someone managing their budget tho, cuz the dude is an genius but if he can't tell you a budget of a game like Shenmue, than it pretty much means he did what he wanted to get the product done. Management wasn't telling him to cut corners on his games.

The dude wrote back stories for each of the NPCs in Shenmue 1 and each model was different. He was doing this while the world thought Metal Gear Solid was 'movie like', its a big leap in quality.

[Tad]

Don't think anyone said it was.

We'll never know the true cost I suspect, but to me, the 80 that's been quoted makes no sense. Anyway, Suzuki's using a much cheaper and powerful engine for Shenmue lll which would be able to pull off all of what they desire and most likely a lot more easier too.

It sounds to me as though they're going to make Shenmue lll at it's most basic level, then add extras providing the funding is there via kickstarter.

[max_cady]

Well, a lot of games devs nowadays basically sell you a full price "vanilla" version and the rest is sold via DLC. Speaking of which I keep re-reading Ben Kuchera's Polygon opinion piece and I still don't understand the article's point.


Game budgets being a mystery should shock nobody. What do we gain in knowing the game's budget? He speculates that based on what Yu Suzuki said the original's game budget was. The Kickstarter amount so far, according to him, leaves a lot of money unaccounted for based on Shenmue's original production budget. Is he assuming that Shenmue III's budget will be similar to the massive costs 10 years ago?

[Tad]

Not sure, but if so, I really can't see it being that expensive. The things Shenmue did back in the day were completely alien to gaming and have not only become the norm, but also improved on as technology has gotten better.

If cost is still an issue  (which in life, always is), there are corners that can be cut without damaging the core game in my opinion. Mini games, less observational moments for minor stuff, less irelevant NPC's interactions, a less technical fighting system etc. Going by where we know Ryo is going, it doesn't seem like there's going to be the vast city life etc the previous game had anyway and more forests and rural areas. That can work in their favour as trees, rock textures, bushes etc can (and are in all games) be duplicated.

[max_cady]

That's the impression I'm getting from Shenmue 3 as a whole. Taking place in mainland China, namely rural China. Many of those paths can reuse the same assets. Now the villages can still be sizable and you can still go inside stores at certain hours of the day. But again a sizable area in a Shenmue game, would still be smaller than something like we see in RDR, Saint's Row or Sleeping Dogs. Even Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was a full on sandbox game.

Oddly enough, the NPCs in Shenmue 2 were generally speaking much friendlier and if you talked to some of them, they would guide you to the location at a snail's pace. That was a nice touch, but ultimately worthless.

[Tad]

Exactly. Things like that could be cut and just give Ryo a map or something.

[Pao]

Worthless? I don't think so.  When directions were unclear I appreciated following NPCs. 
Also, seems like the Kickstarter will barely hit 200k in 24 hours... That's a massive slowdown.