Shenmue III Release Topic

[MrPopo]

It seems likely the issue is that everyone who was interested in Shenmue already got it through the Kickstarter. It seems like a similar thing happened to Pillars of Eternity II; the first game was well reviewed but the second game didn't do much in the way of sales after a successful Fig campaign (I took a bath on that one).

[pierrot]

(Deep breaths)
Okay, Sload, I had to revise this post to reduce the aggressive tone, and this is really not how I want to spend my weekend, but let's try this one more time.

Honestly I find it a bit churlish of the Shenmue fanbase to criticise a professional body like ABG for their methodolgy while going by the word of some dude in a forum, whose methodology is pretty similar

They're not even remotely similar methodologies--. You at least agree that ABG relied on Gamstat for its sales projections, right? I've shown already that Gamstat is not a trustworthy source, even just for fun. It's built on a leak on reddit, and I hope you aren't saying that that is more unreliable than someone who has shown clear data through every step of the process. Okay, we'll look at it again, though.

The principal idea of Gamstat is that the active userbase on PS4 is 170 million people. Does this not already bother you? Even after realizing that Sony pegs their total PSN userbase on all platforms at 94 million? Then let me go ahead and illustrate how Gamstat's methods, even for games that do show up in the trophy list before gaining any trophies (which is another central tenant of their process), come out distorted:

Let's say that Gamstat's API polling reveals playerbase percentages for RDR2, and Ys VIII--I believe actual sales for RDR2 are in the 10s of millions, and Ys VIII are in the 100s of thousands, but that's not important; there's a really wide discrepancy. Let's say that RDR2 was polled with a percentage of 60% (They pull this in percentages, not raw values), and let's say that Ys VIII was polled with a percentage of 1%. If their assumption is that the full population is 170 million, then that results in RDR2 users in the ball park of 102 million (hmmm), and Ys numbers of 1.7 million. So, then if there's a game that happens to not show up in people's trophy lists until a trophy is earned, that polled percentage for said game drops mightily. Gamstat even acknowledges that their numbers would diverge from sales over time (even if the numbers weren't inflated already) due to secondary markets.

Using Gamstat for sales projections is negligent. It's simply not accurate.

Also, don't mince words, mate. I am the one accusing ABG of being incompetent. I don't know what the Shenmue fanbase at large is doing.

minus any actual interaction with the publisher so is likely less accurate.

Dude, this is the third time I've said this: ABG doesn't interact with companies on sales data because they produce "independent" reports.

Okay but even if Shenmue 3 had around 75,000+ sales that's not great especially if Deep Silver projected many more

So, let me stop you right there, because I need to point out what it is you're actually suggesting: You're saying that Shenmue III only sold around 24,000 units on the PS4 digitally in all regions, and physically everywhere outside of Japan and Spain in Q4. You're also suggesting that physical PS4 sales, predominantly in Japan and Spain, accounted for as much as 68% of overall PS4 sales.

Even a few thousand sales here and there are basically nothing if they expected to rack up say 200,000 units.

It's very likely, based on what data is available, that overall PS4 sales for Q4 were just shy of 200,000, if not north of it. Again, what you'd be suggesting here is that physical sales in Japan and Spain (plus some uncategorized growth sales and specialty LEs) would have accounted for much more than 25% of worldwide PS4 sales. Is it possible? Strictly speaking, yes, but it's not likely.

It seems likely the issue is that everyone who was interested in Shenmue already got it through the Kickstarter. It seems like a similar thing happened to Pillars of Eternity II; the first game was well reviewed but the second game didn't do much in the way of sales after a successful Fig campaign (I took a bath on that one).

Sorry to hear that about PoE II. Certainly, kickstarter backers account for a large proportion of probable overall units shipped, but many of them also bought multiple copies upon release. I can't quantify it at all, but at any rate, it's not really clear whether or not Deep Silver, internally, actually believes that sales failed to meet expectations. They might, and that might have been passed along to ABG in some way, but even if that is the case, it potentially reflects poorly on what Deep Silver's expectations were. Especially, in theory, because they had a deal with EGS to likely prevent any losses on their investment. Essentially any sales should have been profit. I think it would be sensible that they still wanted to double that investment in sales, so again, I just don't really see how they could have missed that mark.

In all of this, the story is still likely that investing what Yu wants into the the rest of the Shenmue series is not going to bring with it the return that a smaller publisher like Deep Silver wants/needs. It's just that the report paints a picture that it's a sinking ship with a burning mast, a hole in the hull, and oh yeah, is that the Kraken down there?

[Sload Soap]

Honestly, I don't really know what you're arguing about anymore. The report is out, it's there in black and white that Shenmue III was part of a loss for Deep Silver. Bad data or not, it's done.

I don't need to prove or guess or even suggest how well Shenmue 3 did and I'm not going to waste my time looking anymore. The ABG report has shown that however many copies it did sell weren't enough to make up for the projected loss. For me that seems pretty logical and, poor data sets or not, I see no reason to not believe them. They are the experts, not you or I.

I brought up Kingdom Come: Deliverance before as that game did exceptionally well in not dissimilar circumstances. Deep Silver didn't have to trawl Gamestats or Spanish sales figures to come to that conclusion, it sold 500,000 copies in it's first two days and 2,000,000 so far. I think we would have heard if Shenmue was as unqualified a success. Since we haven't and instead have heard is that actually it is part of a projected loss I see no reason to doubt that. Again, pretty logical, pretty simple.

I get you're very invested in this franchise (to the point you're arguing the finer details of a quarterly earnings report) but you can't hide from the fact that there is a more than likely possibility that Shenmue III sold poorly and that this makes Shenmue IV an unlikely proposition.

[Reprise]

To be fair, if it did sell poorly, Deep Silver got out of the game exactly what they put into it - fuck all. Their marketing and promotion of the game was minimal and what they did do was pretty bad. Even the post-launch DLC has been released with little to no fanfare.

[Blu]

I mean is anyone surprised? Mighty Number 9 is another great example of Deep Silver botching advertising. Shenmue's sales don't surprise me, given that most fans probably got the game from the kickstarter campaign. Those projections of sales aren't really surprising to me.

[Sload Soap]

Yeah, I do agree that Deep Silver hasn't handled the release very well. Minimal advertising and a launch slot that put it up against Star Wars and Pokemon doesn't seem too savvy. Post release hasn't been too hot either and, although neither of those DLC packs look worth the money to me, they've had scant build up and just seem to drop.

[Reprise]

Exactly. Although I don't think YsNet and others involved are completely free of blame. The Kickstarter wasn't handled too brilliantly and there was a general sense of naivety to the campaign, with the project feeling a bit amateur from the beginning right up until release.

People are suspicious of KS campaigns anyways, particularly after other projects failed to live up to expectations or simply evaporated, so you can see why the general public and more casual buyers might look at Shenmue 3 and not immediately think they need to buy the game.

[Reprise]

Some financial report is now out:

https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index ... 2020.2782/

[isiolia]

Some financial report is now out:

https://www.shenmuedojo.com/forum/index ... 2020.2782/

Actual Q3 report is here and for all the fussing over the methods in lowering the earnings estimate, they actually made even less (original was 625M, down to 550M projected, actual reported was 467M, page 22 of that report).

[Sload Soap]

Back from a holiday (it was nice, thanks for asking) and just seen this. Despite any solid sales data, this seems like good news, no?