shenmue did not bomb: interesting look at sales

[GinfnersAddict]

I would've thought a cult classic like Shenmue would be going for much more than that. Interesting.

[mue26]

That must be American copies, right?

[JoePesciAddict]

What's that apposed to mean?

[mue26]

it's means Americans are sub-par to our cockney loveliness.

@sweat, where the heck did your posts go??

[Let's Get Sweaty!]

May 21, 2012 22:16:17 GMT mue26 said:

@sweat, where the heck did your posts go??

They needed more work, so I figured I should take them down till I can post something conclusive instead of piecemeal amendments.

[mue26]

Ah, fair enough. It is interesting though, I think the whole "OMG Shenmue sank Sega" thing was always a vast and ridiculous exaggeration and distortion of the truth.

[GinfnersAddict]

May 21, 2012 23:05:32 GMT mue26 said:

Ah, fair enough. It is interesting though, I think the whole "OMG Shenmue sank Sega" thing was always a vast and ridiculous exaggeration and distortion of the truth.

If I remember right was it not being positioned as the title that'll make the Dreamcast become "must have"? As a flagship to attract Joe Bloggs to the console it could be considered a failure. My memory of then is far from the best however.

[Let's Get Sweaty!]

An RPG was never going to achieve that position outside of Japan, and inside Japan Shenmue is a very different style to any RPG that's proven to sell systems on its own. That's something Sega could have identified before investing seventy million dollars into its development, so more fool them if that's what they were banking on.

[GinfnersAddict]

Agreed, and that's probably the main reason for the whole FREE genre invention.

[mue26]

Did they really try and tout the genre of the game as FREE? "Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment"? How can that possibly be a genre!! Even the use of 'FREE' as a feature within the game wasn't really as great as it sounded on paper....I mean, there just wasn't really all that much to do with it.

As far as I can recall SEGA seemed to be going with the whole "it's a game but it's not a game, its an experience" angle. To be fair, I can understand their reasoning behind that to an extent, seeing how Shenmue was arguably the foremost game of it's time to push the 'experience' or 'game tourism' aspects to the forefront and 'gamey mechanics' somewhat to the background. But while the prospect of it's unknown entity ("is an RPG or is it an adventure game? Is it even a game at all? What do you actually do in it?) was always irresistible to me, I think Sega just ended up baffling the vast majority of people by turning Shenmue into an enigma.

[gboy]

Shenmue 1 didnt bomb, it actually made a small profit

Shenmue 2 on the other hand i think lost money, i'm not sure it depends if the 40 million yu suzuki was talking about was for shenmue 1 or both titles, either way even if both games were a mild success sega were already in too bad of a state to be able to finance a 3rd

[mue26]

Shenmue made profit? Seriously? I'm pretty sure the 40 mil was just for the first game.

[GinfnersAddict]

May 27, 2012 1:35:40 GMT mue26 said:

Did they really try and tout the genre of the game as FREE? "Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment"? How can that possibly be a genre!! Even the use of 'FREE' as a feature within the game wasn't really as great as it sounded on paper....I mean, there just wasn't really all that much to do with it.

Suzuki coined a genre title, "FREE" (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment), for the game, based on the interactivity and freedom he wanted to give to the player.

So says wikipedia. That's good enough for me

[gboy]

May 30, 2012 23:04:23 GMT mue26 said:

Shenmue made profit? Seriously? I'm pretty sure the 40 mil was just for the first game.

well I'm not totally sure but it cost them 40 million to produce, I'm sure this was the whole budget including printing, shipping etc and as stated before it sold 1.2 million copies world wide, now I was in france at the time but it costed roughly 500 francs, that's 50 pounds so 75 dollars, I guess probably 200 thousand sold in europe so that's 1.5 million dollars, remove 10% as shops profits and you have 1.35 now lets add the american sales, I heard it sold roughly 400 000 there, at 50$ a piece removing 10 dollars as profit for the shop you still have 16 million, now lets move on to japan where it sold 600 thousand copies, back then it was well known that japan was more expensive than most western countries so I would think it's safe to assume shenmue sold for 60 dollars, lets say 55 to be safe, lets remove 15 as profits and we have 40 dollars in profit a piece, 40 times 600 000= 24 million

so to finish we have 24+16+1.35= 41.35

so that's 41.35 million in profits, and it wasn't said if shenmue US is counted in these sales or not, also the number of sales was something like 1.26 million so this is less than how much they actually made, also shenmue 1&2 were developed as one game, the saturn version suggested this and also the fact that shenmue 2 was released not very long after shenmue one which suggests that there is a high chance that the 40 million was spent on both, also if i'm not mistaken at the shenmue premiere they were already showing niao sun a shenmue 3 character which means they had already gone further in developement than shenmue 2

[mue26]

That's a lot of guesstimation though. Am I arguing with google search engine again

[gboy]

well I'm not entirely sure about the actual prices in the US and Japan, this post is mainly speculation and observations of the facts I was able to find, but let's look at it another way, sega entered the production of shenmue 3 twice and was going to make a shenmue online, if it cost them 60 million to make both games knowing that shenmue 2 only sold a mere 400 000 copies they would of lost 15 million dollars, this is a tremendous amount of money, if they really did lose this much they would of never even considered making shenmue online or shenmue 3 twice

and finally why would shenmue 1 cost twice as much as a much bigger and improved shenmue 2? surely shenmue 2 required more time to work on than 1 therefore even after removing the engine costs and recycled animations they it would of still cost at least the same price to make, this is also a reason why i believe that both shenmue 1&2 were made with the 40 million

[GinfnersAddict]

Wiki says:

the game, which cost an unprecedented $70 million to make,[38] would have had to be purchased twice by every single Dreamcast owner in order for Sega to turn a profit. The $70 million investment presumably included the budget for the resources for additional sequels.

WIKI!!!!!

[gboy]

^ the wiki is obviously talking out of it's ass because the DC sold 10.2 million units, it's saying that for shenmue to turn a profit it would of needed to sell 20.4 million copies? that was just written by some noob at the dojo believing every piece of bullshit he was told, yu suzuki himself said the 70 mil was an overestimation and it was closer to 40mil, and even if it was talking about the date it was released that is still irrelevant as the dreamcast's sales in the first year were growing incredibly fast so that didn't remain the case for very long

[GinfnersAddict]

I dunno. It has a citation so you could go there and look at the figures at the source. Me? I cba

[gboy]

Yeah the citation is from an ign article written in 2007, information is outdated