News Shenmue 3 Kickstarter Wraps Up With $6,333,295

Shenmue 3 Kickstarter Wraps Up With $6,333,295. Massively money.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2015/07/19/6millionisanunholyamountofmoney/1

 

Very much dislike big companies using kickstarter. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Edit, also 4am on Saturday night?

 

amazing news post - 1 line with no link....

 

You know, I wrote this at 4am but I set the CMS to publish it at 11 this morning. This is also why there was no link in the forum post. I'm still getting to grips with the website, being the new guy. Sorry!

Anyway, I /hate/ everything about this Kickstarter. Everything about it seems designed to take advantage of fans.

 

Can you try and act like a reasonable human being for a bit please.

"link doesn't work" or something along those lines would have been fine.

 

Say you had the situation where a big company wasn't going to make a game because they claim there's little interest in it (example: digging up the sourcecode for an old game they had rights to and releasing a special edition). Wouldn't that be an acceptable reason for them to put up a Kickstarter? A way of saying "well put your money where your mouth is".

 

notice the OP has edited his post AFTER I made my reply - to include his link.


the exuberance of your sarcasm is most dilapidating , moreso since you represent bit tech.

 

likely a setting to why no link was published - but , I do concur about a company using kickstarter to `fund` a new product from its own IP ; morally wrong - but is it really any different than say EA , and removing parts of a finished game (mass effect 3) to resell them as optional DLC?

 

Well in that case, "you are missing the link for this one" would have been fine.

 

Seems a fair enough way to fund something that isn't really a commercially viable proposition, Shenmue sold OK, 2 not so much, it was why the third was canned in the first place, high development cost and low sales, very similar games also don't sell well (Yakuza) in the west, so really there is not a lot going for it, who in there right minds would fund it apart from fans?

Might sound like I am bashing but as a Shenmue fan and a Yakuza fan I think it is great but there was not a lot of reason for a publisher to put one out, in this day an age established brands are what sell.

 

Exactly - that was all that was needed...

Well said Gareth - I think that we can chalk this up as another TRBH (thread ruined by Harlequin)

 

I must say, feeling rather terrible. Didn't mean to offend .

 

You didn't offend anyone - unfortunately you will find that some of the members here (like 0.001%) are just particularly rude...

 

Nah you're cool, don't worry about it. Sadly on the net people don't filter themselves like they should.

Welcome to the cheesecake house!

Oh and on topic..that is a ****ing crazy amount. No game is worth that.

 

It's not nearly enough to fund the entire game development (at least, not to the same scale of Shenmue is known for), but it IS enough people putting their money where their mouth is to greenlight full development.

And that's really what 'corporate' kickstarters are: the best possible form of maker research. All those games people say they would throw money at people to make? Here's the opportunity to do so rather than posting the Futurama "shut up and take my money" imagemacro.

 

Pretty much this. The first round of investment in a game is the riskiest. They've put that risk onto fans of the game to minimise risk for themselves. That's why I'm a grumpy so & so about it.

 

If it included xbox one physical release support I think it would have made quite a lot more, it grew a lot when they announced a physical ps4 version around half way through the KS.

 

I remember recently someone making a comment on an article's thread about 'Shenmue not being all that' and that they couldn't understand why people talk about it.

Shenmue was MASSIVE, it sold consoles all by itself. Sadly it never recouped development costs, nor did Shenmue II I believe.

This Kickstarter project... well... it isn't even worth talking about. (That isn't a criticism of your article JakeTucker).

EDIT:

Can it really be called 'The first round' due to the fact that there were two previous games and neither made their development costs back?
END EDIT:


Interesting to see that I am not the only one who not only disagrees with Harlequin but also disapproves the way they go about it. I think I will permanently ignore them from now on. #HarlequinSTFU

 

The main risk of game development is rarely the game not being finished (Development Hell is the exception rather than the rule), it's trying to guess which games will actually sell once produced. This is why sequels and palette-swaps are so common: publishers know they're going to sell, because they've already sold copies. A game the likes of Shenmue hasn't been seen in over a decade, so developing something of that scale is a big risk. Sending out surveys saying "would you buy another Shenmue game" is practically worthless is estimating actual demand, but having people actually pay money to literally vote with their wallets is an excellent indicator of demand (though there's still the risk that those who funded the kickstarter constitutes 100% of the audience).