Maybe it’s just me being jaded, but I’d almost be willing to place money on the major game studios changing almost nothing in regards to their AAA strategies. They’re pretty much all looking for home runs, and in most cases, the windfall profits they’re after require what we might consider pretty obscene investment. I kind of anticipate the games industry will mostly just do what a bunch of other industries do to maximize profits out of risky endeavors: Lay off workers. I’m kind of hedging my bet, because that’s what they’ve already been doing. Some are probably going to end up with more misses than hits and fold, of course.
I know this is meant to be a positive topic, but it’s a pretty old one at this point, and a lot of things have changed. One thing that kind of makes me think Shenmue 4 might be a pipe dream at this point is how poorly FFVII Rebirth has sold. There are surely a number of different factors contributing to that, but one big one is that it’s a direct sequel. Obviously it’s not a perfect analogy for Shenmue 4 since Rebirth is part of a remake where they split the original into three parts, but what I think is notable is that the VII Remake was released when the original FFVII was 23 years old. Now it’s 27 years old at the time of Rebirth’s release. Direct sequels are probably doomed to market attrition; Getting fresh blood is probably a non-starter, and having large gaps of time between those releases probably just makes it even less realistic. If Shenmue 4’s ceiling for sales is almost certainly capped at a fraction of Shenmue 3’s before even a finger is lifted in development, I’m not so sure I see a realistic way that it happens in today’s climate.
Not that I want to turn people off of fighting the good fight, though. If Yu is willing to burn bridges in his late career, there’s always a chance he could fleece some entity out of a bag of cash to make another one. Would just need to move on to another stiff after that to finish it up. I guess there’s also the outside chance YSNet works up enough cash on hand through other projects like Air Twister to make something resembling Shenmue with, but—.