ShogunDarius
Member
I agree with this and put the stretch goals higher up the page, and ps4 physical
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
SHENMUE 3 kickstarter (PC/PS4) - FINAL DAY - NEW KS RECORD GO GO GO!
- Thread starter Mr. RPG
- Start date
- Status
I agree with this and put the stretch goals higher up the page, and ps4 physical
Which will make the fact that I got a physical PS4 version for Bloodstained out of the KS but not for Shenmue III all the more irksome :/
Super Rookie
Member
I'm beginning to think:
Baisha - Shenmue III
Chobu - Shenmue IV
Bailu Village - Shenmue V
And depending to the amount raised, Shenmue III could be the conclusion!
eso76
Member
The producers are listed in the KS page, and for all we know, launching the kickstarter during their E3 conference might be the only kind of support Sony is giving.
The budget behind the game is anyone's guess, i am sure the producers themselves don't know yet.
I don't see the problem because Suzuki didn't promise state of the art anything, didn't show some ambitious and misleading target you have reasons to doubt he'll meet, to get more people to pledge.
He simply promised he would deliver a continuation to the story in some form and presented a very humble trailer for it. Actually the worst possible trailer.
You decide whether it's worth your money or not.
And that's it, really.
I would also like to know the scope of the game, but that's probably still up in the air until they have a more precise idea of how the game could do at retail.
Despite KS success, Shenmue 3 is still a financial risk.
And you know what i want more than Shenmue 3 ?
Yu Suzuki not to being responsible for another financial 'disaster' and have his reputation completely ruined because of it.
Theonik
Member
I'm beginning to think:
Baisha - Shenmue III
Chobu - Shenmue IV
Bailu Village - Shenmue V
And depending to the amount raised, Shenmue III could be the conclusion!
Not really:
Super Rookie
Member
Story could have been reworked, but regardless I hope zero compromises are made.
JohnSpartanLee
Member
Always wondered why these things are called mirrors. They don't seem to reflect very well.if you spend $700-800 / $1,000 then you will be reward with a real SHENMUE FRIGGING MIRROR which is rare!
Can someone explain?
I'm beginning to think:
Baisha - Shenmue III
Chobu - Shenmue IV
Bailu Village - Shenmue V
And depending to the amount raised, Shenmue III could be the conclusion!
That would be nice!
So I'm going into MAJOR SPECULATION MODE HERE, please take everything I say with a grain of salt. It's about the math.
I think it's reasonable that Sony is funding at 5 times plus the kickstarter stretch goal rate up to a certain cap. Say, 25 million.
So for example, if it reached the mediocre 2 million, they would pledge $10 million plus $2 million. $12 million. That would result in a telltale game level of production, for the entire product. It wouldn't have been bad at all, and the story would've been told, but people probably would've complained.
If all the stretch goals are met, at $5 million, they would pledge $25 million plus $5 million. $30 million. This would be plenty of money for Yu Suzuki's vision to be fully realized.
All you have to then assume is that the final game product sells for about a million copies, that's it, and you're making profit. Even if the vast majority of donations are the $29 dollar option, it's only 160k preorders. Selling the game at even $40 breaks the profit barrier.
This doesn't take into consideration any of the potential for the other two games in the series to be remade by Sega using assets / programming from the new sequel (or even licensing making the two games to YsNet, which they'd probably be prepared to do after having done Shenmue 3).
I'm not trying to be overly optimistic here, I think all the stretch goals will be met, and then more. $29 for a game made by a really amazing director is a pretty damn good deal. But just assuming they don't go far beyond $5 million, the game can and will be profitable.
This is just back of the napkin / forum post math, I'm sure the investors are actually looking far beyond that as the potential for it to be a resurgence of a game series.
Yu Suzuki was way ahead of his time and a lot of the stuff he wanted, such as eyes follow players, real time weather systems (following the weather that was recorded at the time the game takes place), stuff like that was super duper hard on a system like Dreamcast (even harder on a system like Saturn which they were originally targeting). Now you can do that effortlessly in UE4.
It's simply unfair to compare Yu's efforts then to now. Simply absurd, even. The technology has advanced so much some of the "groundbreaking" stuff he did is now taken for granted (due in large part to his own efforts to implement that stuff so early in 3D games development).
I think it's reasonable that Sony is funding at 5 times plus the kickstarter stretch goal rate up to a certain cap. Say, 25 million.
So for example, if it reached the mediocre 2 million, they would pledge $10 million plus $2 million. $12 million. That would result in a telltale game level of production, for the entire product. It wouldn't have been bad at all, and the story would've been told, but people probably would've complained.
If all the stretch goals are met, at $5 million, they would pledge $25 million plus $5 million. $30 million. This would be plenty of money for Yu Suzuki's vision to be fully realized.
All you have to then assume is that the final game product sells for about a million copies, that's it, and you're making profit. Even if the vast majority of donations are the $29 dollar option, it's only 160k preorders. Selling the game at even $40 breaks the profit barrier.
This doesn't take into consideration any of the potential for the other two games in the series to be remade by Sega using assets / programming from the new sequel (or even licensing making the two games to YsNet, which they'd probably be prepared to do after having done Shenmue 3).
I'm not trying to be overly optimistic here, I think all the stretch goals will be met, and then more. $29 for a game made by a really amazing director is a pretty damn good deal. But just assuming they don't go far beyond $5 million, the game can and will be profitable.
This is just back of the napkin / forum post math, I'm sure the investors are actually looking far beyond that as the potential for it to be a resurgence of a game series.
Yu Suzuki was way ahead of his time and a lot of the stuff he wanted, such as eyes follow players, real time weather systems (following the weather that was recorded at the time the game takes place), stuff like that was super duper hard on a system like Dreamcast (even harder on a system like Saturn which they were originally targeting). Now you can do that effortlessly in UE4.
It's simply unfair to compare Yu's efforts then to now. Simply absurd, even. The technology has advanced so much some of the "groundbreaking" stuff he did is now taken for granted (due in large part to his own efforts to implement that stuff so early in 3D games development).
i think you're probably right about sony funding a multiple of the kickstarter amount. that'd be the most even-handed way to throw support behind the game.
that said, the FAQ on the kickstarter mentions sources, plural. i don't think all the additional funding is coming from sony.
that said, the FAQ on the kickstarter mentions sources, plural. i don't think all the additional funding is coming from sony.
Theonik
Member
OK I have time to address this a bit more now. Yes it is a huge problem, a great example of this is early KS like DFA which were too optimistic about the amounts they asked and didn't estimate how generous they were with the rewards and how much money was actually left to make the game. Ideally backers would get nothing in return if you wanted maximum return on the KS amount for obvious reasons. However, KS is different to the traditional idea of crowd funding or fan investment, where you can see examples of in other platforms and the later in Project Cars in particular.
Now, since KS is reward based and not 'You guys give us $500k for nothing and our investors will make the thing and you can buy it!' there are a few questions raised. What you give is very important, you need incentives for people to back but you still need high enough margins to get money left over at the end. Digital rewards are the most cost-effective, but also aren't that strong incentives for people to put large sums, so a balancing act needs to happen to maximise the amount of money you can get. At the same time, if you have external backers who have invested into the project they are interested in assurances that their investment is viable. That's a problem when you put it down because while high amounts on KS have proven to also translate to high sales after the fact there are still large questions in terms of viability for whatever they are backing the project for.
Generally this is indeed how KS works, don't expect the final amount to be near what they get. They really should have put the target amount at $5m imo. Though of course there is a balancing act there as well.
It sounds like these are already in the game and the stretchgoals are to flesh them out since the story is going to be whole, but to get the real shenmue fucking around experience there are extra resources involved. TL;DR You guys better hustle on this or I will never forgive you.
Edit:
This concept art is from when it was still VFRPG as seen in the corner there, so story is not quite the same, as is the scope but it gives you a rough idea of what was planned to put some things into some perspective.
So, this means Ryo becomes Akira from VF in the end ?
Actually, in the second to last chapter it looks like the guy being carried is Ryo and not the other way round.
I'd like to refer to this 2003 interview:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/features/interviews/am2/
Chapters 7 - 16 and 2 are unfinished,
Shenmue III would start from chapter 7.
Shenmue IV would likely not be the final game.
Would be nice if Shin Ishikawa would be actually (co-)directing. Shenmue II was far superior to Shenmue I IMHO.
I also just noticed that the top 3000 backers represent like 1/3rd of the entire amount pledged so far. Wow.
Definitely a lot of potential if they diversify the top tiers more.
Very true, I didn't intend to exclude that, and you're right it's likely not an all Sony affair. It's very possible that at this time Microsoft is negotiating being part of the deal as we type (and it's unlikely the agreement completely excludes anyone specifically, YsNet wouldn't sign off on such a restrictive contract).
The math gets more complicated as you divvy up the various income sources, of course. I was thinking Sony would get 100% of profits until they break even then a 50/50 split. If more investors come on then it would of course be a lot more complicated than that. Sony / MS could get 50% of profits until break even and then it'd be a 25/25/50 split. Sony could fight that and make it 30/20/50, either way everyone wins.
edit: MS / Sony used as an example due to Cfer's post, just replace X investor and do the splits however you chose if you want to make it more complicated, but we don't know of other potential investors but MS is probably sniffing around.
maquiladora
Member
The Kickstarter page does need to be managed better to keep people's interest in the game and create incentives to back it more.
it seems the long term goal is not only to make shenmue 3, but shenmue 4 as well, so i anticipate the risk is spread quite considerably.
we'll see how this pans out. i expect the story behind the development is going to be as interesting as the game itself. almost makes me wish we were getting a behind the scenes series much like double fine adventure did.
eso76
Member
Oh, that i know.
A lot of the stuff Shenmue was doing now comes for free in the shape of tools in most engines or middleware.
This is why i think Sega dropped the ball. A lot of the money went towards the development of tools they should have tried making the most of. Had Sega kept the engine up to date they would have recovered from the initial investment with following chapters becoming cheaper and cheaper and an engine they could outsource.
I believe today's tools would allow a small staff to produce a Shenmue the size of Yokosuka in a matter of weeks, with motion capture being like the most expensive voice of the list.
Still, in Suzuki's vision Shenmue 3 probably still requires a decent budget and the game needs to do well at retail.
Duh. I missed that.
I gathered some Kicktraq data for Bloodstained, Ouya and Shenmue III for comparison of the campaigns, if anyone here is interested. Will repost future updates in the KS comment section.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fsfu-22G6hGTuZ2fxfIj8GlT0NaRkFlLbpw8TmpAX7M/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fsfu-22G6hGTuZ2fxfIj8GlT0NaRkFlLbpw8TmpAX7M/edit?usp=sharing
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
Don't know if this has been posted but there's a new FAQ:
I know some people here wanted to use paypal
I know some people here wanted to use paypal
Thank you for this!
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
we knew that yesterday but it's ok because you may not be the only one who doesn't knows that
flipswitch
Member
flipswitch
Member
Is this true, the PC version will be handled buy someone else and not Ys?
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
Yeah, it's in one of the interviews that was linked to on one of the last few pages.
Always wondered why these things are called mirrors. They don't seem to reflect very well.
Can someone explain?
The other side is the mirrored side
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
Is Cedric Biscay is the guy that they had in their KS video?
I don't know which video you're referring to, but this is the interview in question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKb0vtQz8xo
It looks like it's meant to be today's Kickstarter update video.
Theonik
Member
Have they said why they took down the English version of that. I caught it before it was taken down and can understand French anyway but the decision baffles me.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
There was a video on theuir KS page about some guy which is Ryan Payton so I got it wrong
but I haven't seen this
In the Youtube comments they say the English version will be posted tomorrow.
Do they say anything interesting in the interview that wasn't covered in the partial summary above?
No, pretty much everything discussed in the video is covered in the summuary
SpoonyBard
Banned
Too bad the 5 million stretch goal wasn't there from the start, but I think there's still a decent chance that it will be met.
JohnSpartanLee
Member
ShogunDarius
Member
was it fangamer that ran the Bloodstained kickstarter? I'm hoping they will offer some advice to the people behind this one
- Status