Random Shenmue III Thoughts

[WuyingRen]

So it then begs the question around the dev budget itself. We know they had to pay off around $2.21 million in fees etc leaving a budget of $4.12m towards development. So did Deep Silver come in and say here's X amount for development and marketing combined to make $20m overall or did they say heres X amount for Dev + Y amount for marketing. In which case the budget for the overall project was likely more than $20m.

Your guess is as good as mine. I’d be surprised if Deep Silver had originally planned to put in as much as they ended up spending though. My guess would be that their original commitment was to double what had been raised through Kickstarter and the deals with Sony and Shibuya - but ended up having to kick in more when it became clear that the game wasn’t going to be ready in time.

If the second scenario is the case then A the Epic deal must have been pretty significant and B it could make a 4th game, from a financial standpoint a tougher sell.

Looking at some of the previous Epic deals I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was for $10m or thereabouts. It must have been a fairly significant amount for Deep Silver to bring forth the inevitable backlash of signing the deal and the financial loss from Steam sales.

Over the time leading to release Shenmue III had booths at E3, TGS, Gamescom and various promo materials there as well as Reboot Blue and a conference in France (the name eludes me now). That doesn't come cheap. Sony did a play at EGX (whether that was free or not I dont know) and there were quite a few magazines with spreads in them with the poster and release date. That stuff isn't cheap and marketing can spiral out of control very quickly.

I’m not suggesting it was cheap, but $4m?

I agree the fluid budget was more a hindrance than anything as was the kickstarter promises made in terms of the 3 areas etc. For me I do think it would have been fine for backers had it been a Shenmue I type of experience in terms of 1 main-ish area with lots going on and then an ending area. But I appreciate Yu Suzuki wanting to go all out on it and its not a criticism of the game, more me thinking aloud.

Im sure that fans of the series would have been happy with anything with the Shenmue name on it. The casual gamers who chipped in though? A lot of people seemed to be under the impression that S3 would conclude the series (I’m not sure why, because it was fairly clear that this wasn’t the case from the get go) and I think it was this idea of helping to bring an end to a legendary dormant series that got a lot of people on board. If Yu has come out pitching a small area with no worthwhile stretch goals, I really don’t think we’d have seen anywhere near as much pledged.

I do wonder what Yu Suzuki would have done given the same amount of budget from purely a private investor.

I think we would have gotten a very different game, as I think we would have if Yu had known his full budget from the get go.

In terms of publically stating the budget, its difficult. I don't think (I could be wrong) that outside of here, PRS and Shenmue 500k it actually gathered all that much press, certainly not that I saw. But yes it is another stick to beat the game with, especially if it was $20m for development only.

What bothers me a little about it is that he seemingly volunteered the information without really being asked to. He could have just said ‘we ended up with a lot more than the $2m we had originally asked for’ and left it at that. That he failed to clarify whether this total included marketing, Kickstarter fees and reward distribution costs leaves it up to interpretation - and you can guarantee that anybody using this to criticize the game is going to interpret it as being $20m on development.

Looking at some of the comments on SEPWs video and elsewhere on the web, I think a lot of people picked up on it. If you search google for ‘Shenmue 3 budget’ it literally pops up at the top of the page.

 

[Dg1995]

Oh, I forgot to tell this but Epic also gains some money due to this that Shenmue 3 uses Unreal Engine.(I think it was 50-100 cents for every sold copy)

 

[spud1897]

Your guess is as good as mine. I’d be surprised if Deep Silver had originally planned to put in as much as they ended up spending though. My guess would be that their original commitment was to double what had been raised through Kickstarter and the deals with Sony and Shibuya - but ended up having to kick in more when it became clear that the game wasn’t going to be ready in time.

Looking at some of the previous Epic deals I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was for $10m or thereabouts. It must have been a fairly significant amount for Deep Silver to bring forth the inevitable backlash of signing the deal and the financial loss from Steam sales.

Sounds plausible. I agree and I suppose what would the chances have been of Shenmue III turning over $10m, for our discussions sake, on Steam? So in that respect the Epic deal, on the surface is good business for Deep Silver.

I’m not suggesting it was cheap, but $4m?

Excuse my tone, came out as really off when it wasn't intended. I'm not sure $4 is a lot of money but without knowing the in's and out's it is hearsay in terms of what the actual budget was.

Im sure that fans of the series would have been happy with anything with the Shenmue name on it. The casual gamers who chipped in though? A lot of people seemed to be under the impression that S3 would conclude the series (I’m not sure why, because it was fairly clear that this wasn’t the case from the get go) and I think it was this idea of helping to bring an end to a legendary dormant series that got a lot of people on board. If Yu has come out pitching a small area with no worthwhile stretch goals, I really don’t think we’d have seen anywhere near as much pledged.

I think we would have gotten a very different game, as I think we would have if Yu had known his full budget from the get go.

Agreed, as long as it was communicated in the right way. In terms of the stretch goals it would have depended on what they were and how they could be implemented within 1 setting. Maybe I'm being hyper-critical here but could Bailu have had more lore around Iwao and Sunming's training and more on the mirrors themselves. We did find out some bit and pieces but I do wonder if there could have been more. Of course this is without knowing what's to come in Shenmue 4. I do wonder whether most of what was delivered in Shenmue III could have been in done in the equivalent of Shenmue 1 sized areas, fleshed out etc. Anyway that's speculation on my part. I agree that having the wider stretches are enticing. I'm also not sure why people assumed 3 would be the end, it has been public knowledge for years that it wasn't but maybe that message didn't get out in the mainstream media enough?

What bothers me a little about it is that he seemingly volunteered the information without really being asked to. He could have just said ‘we ended up with a lot more than the $2m we had originally asked for’ and left it at that. That he failed to clarify whether this total included marketing, Kickstarter fees and reward distribution costs leaves it up to interpretation - and you can guarantee that anybody using this to criticize the game is going to interpret it as being $20m on development.

Looking at some of the comments on SEPWs video and elsewhere on the web, I think a lot of people picked up on it. If you search google for ‘Shenmue 3 budget’ it literally pops up at the top of the page.

Agreed on both points re the kickstarter and dev budget. People will interpret that as $20m on development and any counter to that is, mostly, speculation.

Fair enough. I'd not really dug into that but stand corrected :)

 

[Creward]

Oh, I forgot to tell this but Epic also gains some money due to this that Shenmue 3 uses Unreal Engine.(I think it was 50-100 cents for every sold copy)

It needs to reach a certain threshold of revenue. After you hit the 1M dollars of revenue you need to pay 5% (I think its from the above mentionedrrevenue figures) in Unreal royalities.

 

[WuyingRen]

Sounds plausible. I agree and I suppose what would the chances have been of Shenmue III turning over $10m, for our discussions sake, on Steam? So in that respect the Epic deal, on the surface is good business for Deep Silver.

Yup. The Epic deal made a lot of sense from where I’m sitting. Ftr, they’d have needed to have sold considerably more copies to turn over that $10m on Steam too thanks to the inferior revenue split and Epic waving the engine license fee as part of the deal. A sale through Epic is worth nearly 20% more for Deep Silver than a sale through Steam. Epic also helped quite a bit with marketing the game post launch too (I think they paid quite a few ‘influencers’ to stream the game and pushed it quite heavily on their storefront for the first month or so).

I just wish they’d handled the announcement a bit better and had a plan in place to counter the inevitable backlash as I think the way they handled it cost them sales that they needn’t have lost.

Excuse my tone, came out as really off when it wasn't intended. I'm not sure $4 is a lot of money but without knowing the in's and out's it is hearsay in terms of what the actual budget was.

No worries. I didn’t take it as you being hostile or anything and agree that these things can be expensive, but it really didn’t feel like Deep Silver put too much into marketing the game. That’s not a criticism of them or anything, I just didn’t see that much in the way of marketing.

Agreed, as long as it was communicated in the right way. In terms of the stretch goals it would have depended on what they were and how they could be implemented within 1 setting. Maybe I'm being hyper-critical here but could Bailu have had more lore around Iwao and Sunming's training and more on the mirrors themselves. We did find out some bit and pieces but I do wonder if there could have been more. Of course this is without knowing what's to come in Shenmue 4. I do wonder whether most of what was delivered in Shenmue III could have been in done in the equivalent of Shenmue 1 sized areas, fleshed out etc. Anyway that's speculation on my part. I agree that having the wider stretches are enticing. I'm also not sure why people assumed 3 would be the end, it has been public knowledge for years that it wasn't but maybe that message didn't get out in the mainstream media enough?

I feel as though if Yu were interested in including more in Bailu we would have seen it in the Shenmue 3 that we got. That he opted to stretch this section of the game out and fill it with random story elements like the history of the Verdant bridge suggests to me that he was struggling to fill it as it was, but I could be wrong.

I have no problem with them going with smaller, more intimate environments (I was actually a little disappointed that Bailu ended up being so big given what we’d been told about it) and think it would really help them recapture some of that intimacy from Shenmue 1. Looking back at some of the things Yu has said both pre and post launch though, I get the feeling that Yu subscribes to the idea that bigger is better and so have a feeling that the ‘open worlds’ are only going to get bigger and bigger as the series progresses. To be clear, I don’t have a problem with that, but I also don’t think that it’s at all required.

Agreed on both points re the kickstarter and dev budget. People will interpret that as $20m on development and any counter to that is, mostly, speculation.

To be honest, that’s my take away from it, because in my head, it would have been in his best interest to have had the ‘known’ development budget be as low as possible - but then again, I also think it would have made the most sense to have simply said nothing - so what do I know?

 

[Rydeen]

I'm pretty sure I've watched this interview three or four times, and always seem to forget a bunch of stuff from it. I'm not sure if this is the exact interview that was being referenced, but I was trying to flip through it a bit to find a comment on a figure for the budget. I'm hoping to go through it more carefully when I have the time--I'll add some time stamps, and brush up anything I might have made a mistake on in my haste--but I noticed that they actually cover a lot of the recurring questions from fans. Just a couple:

- Throws weren't put into the game due to the limited resources. The sensors they used for mo-cap were fairly bulky, with force sensors, and such all in a single device. They did all the mo-cap in house, so the fear was that the sensor could be broken from throws being performed on the person wearing them.

- The Saturn version of Shenmue went from Yokosuka up to Guilin.

- Suzuki acknowledged early on with Shenmue III that he couldn't keep going at basically a single game per single story chapter, for 11 games, like the first two games. So they played with the idea of removing chapters, but ultimately he felt that he didn't want to compromise some of the story elements that might get dropped from certain chapters. Instead, they took the story chapters that were left to tell, and rearranged it more comfortably fit into a few games.

- Shenhua's outfit was changed partly due to elements of the original design, that couldn't be represented on the Dreamcast, potentially appearing too high society for her.

- When making the Shenmue games, Suzuki has typically written out the story scenarios from the novelized chapters, and given them to Okayasu to implement into the gameplay structure. Suzuki will point out things like wanting a FREE battle in certain places, but Okayasu has handled how they generally play out over the gameplay. Particularly for any branching aspects. Suzuki also mentioned the scenario for SIII basically repeatedly chasing down thugs, and it sounded like he was saying Okayasu's solution to that was using the gang names in order to change the focus from just random thugs, to more organized groups.

Just a general thought that the budget, whether it was $12 million, or $20 million, weighed heavily on almost every decision for the game. Suzuki repeatedly mentions resources being limited (unlike the first two games), and how he tried to allocate those resources in order to hit certain objectives. He specifically mentioned that the primary focus was on the game world, which is what I personally care about the most in any Shenmue game, and what I found to be the most successful part of Shenmue III.

 

[ShenFan2020]

I'm pretty sure I've watched this interview three or four times, and always seem to forget a bunch of stuff from it. I'm not sure if this is the exact interview that was being referenced, but I was trying to flip through it a bit to find a comment on a figure for the budget. I'm hoping to go through it more carefully when I have the time--I'll add some time stamps, and brush up anything I might have made a mistake on in my haste--but I noticed that they actually cover a lot of the recurring questions from fans. Just a couple:

- Throws weren't put into the game due to the limited resources. The sensors they used for mo-cap were fairly bulky, with force sensors, and such all in a single device. They did all the mo-cap in house, so the fear was that the sensor could be broken from throws being performed on the person wearing them.

- The Saturn version of Shenmue went from Yokosuka up to Guilin.

- Suzuki acknowledged early on with Shenmue III that he couldn't keep going at basically a single game per single story chapter, for 11 games, like the first two games. So they played with the idea of removing chapters, but ultimately he felt that he didn't want to compromise some of the story elements that might get dropped from certain chapters. Instead, they took the story chapters that were left to tell, and rearranged it more comfortably fit into a few games.

- Shenhua's outfit was changed partly due to elements of the original design, that couldn't be represented on the Dreamcast, potentially appearing too high society for her.

- When making the Shenmue games, Suzuki has typically written out the story scenarios from the novelized chapters, and given them to Okayasu to implement into the gameplay structure. Suzuki will point out things like wanting a FREE battle in certain places, but Okayasu has handled how they generally play out over the gameplay. Particularly for any branching aspects. Suzuki also mentioned the scenario for SIII basically repeatedly chasing down thugs, and it sounded like he was saying Okayasu's solution to that was using the gang names in order to change the focus from just random thugs, to more organized groups.

Just a general thought that the budget, whether it was $12 million, or $20 million, weighed heavily on almost every decision for the game. Suzuki repeatedly mentions resources being limited (unlike the first two games), and how he tried to allocate those resources in order to hit certain objectives. He specifically mentioned that the primary focus was on the game world, which is what I personally care about the most in any Shenmue game, and what I found to be the most successful part of Shenmue III.

Also dont forget the movie script writers and directors that helped develop the first game. And IMO it shows massively, the direction, camera angles, story beats, everything just flows properly like a movie.

In comparison 3 feels like a cheap kids anime director was in charge of everything.

 

[Rydeen]

Also dont forget the movie script writers and directors that helped develop the first game. And IMO it shows massively, the direction, camera angles, story beats, everything just flows properly like a movie.

In comparison 3 feels like a cheap kids anime director was in charge of everything.

So, unless you mean Takeuchi Hiroaki (Animatrix), who also served as a producer for Shenmue III, I'm fairly certain this isn't accurate. Suzuki talks about the roundtables with directors from other forms of media in that IGN interview. The only way I've ever heard it described is that before any actual development began, Suzuki met with these creators in order to see how to best channel other art forms into a more cinematic video game experience. His conclusion from the discussions was that story and music were the common threads between the mediums, and very little else made the translation barrier. That was what inspired Suzuki to put together the novelizations to drive the story, and play music to production staff during development. Those creators from outside the video game space would have served as early research consultants, not production staff.

To reiterate: The game scenarios* are derived from the novelizations, and went through Suzuki; Those game scenarios were then given to Okayasu (who held this role throughout the series, to this point) to be laid out into the structure of the games' progression, as it pertained to gameplay. Not a lot changed here other than budget.

*EDIT: In other words, story boards, scripts, rough suggestions for locations of things like FREE battles, etc.

 

[BruceWayne911]

Do you think sales will increase for Shenmue 3 once its released on Steam? IMO not to many people are holding out. Those who wanted to play the game have already.

 

[spud1897]

Do you think sales will increase for Shenmue 3 once its released on Steam? IMO not to many people are holding out. Those who wanted to play the game have already.

There will be a small spike but being honest if they generated 10k sales on Steam that would be a success in my book. Anything above that is a bonus. Each sale counts towards Shenmue IV.

Also it's the same day Cyberpunk 2077 releases.

 

[Demon's Triangle]

I think 400,000 copies is more than enough. I am almost positive Deep Silver has greenlit sequels to games that have sold much less. I don’t even think the average Sonic game moves a million units these days—thinking back to Sega.

End of the day, Shenmue 4, if it exists, will likely look and play a lot like Shenmue 3.

I think some simple changes, like toning down the stamina meter, more dialogue choices and reducing the money grinds, will make a lot of difference, without massively overhauling the gameplay. Maybe make the QTEs a bit easier, I'm good at them but I know a lot of people found them frustrating.

 

[Sonoshee]

Also it's the same day Cyberpunk 2077 releases.

True Spud but that date for Shenmue 3 has been set in stone since last year.
CP2077 has been pushed back so many times it wouldn't surprise me if it was delayed again.

 

[BruceWayne911]

I'm just ready to hear a announcement for Shenmue 4. Announcing Shenmue 4 would also spike Shenmue 3 sales. Maybe Yu has different partners investing this time around for Shenmue 4.

 

[Sonoshee]

I'm just ready to hear a announcement for Shenmue 4. Announcing Shenmue 4 would also spike Shenmue 3 sales. Maybe Yu has different partners investing this time around for Shenmue 4.

Personally I wouldn't expect to hear anything on a Shenmue 4 until mid-next year at the earliest.
Maybe when it is announced there'll be a sales drive on the HD ports and Shenmue 3 on EGS, Steam and PS4 to coincide with it.

 

[BruceWayne911]

Personally I wouldn't expect to hear anything on a Shenmue 4 until mid-next year at the earliest.
Maybe when it is announced there'll be a sales drive on the HD ports and Shenmue 3 on EGS, Steam and PS4 to coincide with it.

I agree, it just sucks that we gotta wait . We waited almost 20 years I'm tired of waiting. At the very least just make it kinda obvious.

 

[ShenSun]

I think we'll be waiting until 2022 until we hear something

 

[Sonoshee]

I think we'll be waiting until 2022 until we hear something

At that point, maybe a juicy teaser trailer or WIP

 

[The Hero Spot]

SPOILERS- This came at the top of my head so I’ve decided to share it. there’s one thing in Shenmue 3 that concerns me about the future of the series and that is the fact we don’t learn anything from shenhua’s father. All the dying questions from Shenmue 2’s ending are left unfulfilled and likely won’t get proper pay off. We see that Yuan isn’t with Ryo, Shenhua and Ren when they scale the Great Wall of China, will we ever get answers about what was discovered in the cave from him? Why didn’t Ryo or Shenhua question him on the boat? I want to know how Yuan knew of Ryo and Shenhua’s inevitable confrontation days before it happened, I want to know what the “proof“ is, I want to know what the “Phoenix entrusted to their people” is, I want to know how yuan knew he’d go missing. Because Yuan isn’t going with Ryo and friends to their next destination, I’m worried that the story will continue as normal and not really elaborate on these things which would result in a big glaring plot hole when looking at the entire saga. Of course the story isn’t finished yet and I can’t fully say this is what will happen but it’s just a concern I have based off of Shenmue 3’s ending and I think it’s a fair concern

 

[ShenSun]

Suzuki should just tweet "S4" when development begins, and then say no more until the game is 70% done and ready to show in teaser form

 

[Sonoshee]

Suzuki should just tweet "S4" when development begins, and then say no more until the game is 70% done and ready to show in teaser form

He was always pretty secretive about development though. That's why I really felt bad when he was obliged to show stuff during S3's development just for many to b*tch about how unfinished it was looking (apparently some people don't know the meaning of "Work in Progress" )